St. VALENTINE'S DAY

Since small children we've anticipated Valentine's Day. So where did we get such a twisted holiday......

The true history of Valentine begins in pagan times, as most things do. During the 5th century, Romans celebrated the festival of Lupercian; a celebration of sensuality and time for men and women to meet and begin to “know” each other (nod, nod, wink...). During the evening, Romans engaged in the annual rite of passage to the god Lupercus. Names of teenage women were placed in a box and picked at random by adolescent men and thus, that man was assigned that woman. The arrangement lasted for the duration of a year, after which time another lottery was staged. Determined to put an end to this 800-year-old practice, Pope Genasius decided, in 496 AD, to rid Rome of this degenerative activity. But as they found with most of the festivals at the time, it was a bad idea to ban it out right, for fear of retribution from the citizenry. So, rather than upset everyone, he decided to merely rename and redesign the Festival of Lepercian giving it some Christian trimmings. He was clever enough to retain the lottery though. He was astutely aware of a Romans' love for games of chance. Except now into the box that had once held the names of available single women were placed the names of saints. Both men and women extracted slips of paper, and in the ensuing year they were expected to emulate the life of the saint whose name they had drawn. Searching history for an appropriate saint to oversee all of this, Genasius chose the canonized Bishop Valentine.
WHO WAS VALENTINE?
Saint Valentine had been beheaded around 270AD by the mad emperor Claudius II. It seems, Claudius was convinced that married men made bad soldiers and were less attracted to the notions of adventure and hardship. So, in his infinite wisdom, he outlawed marriage all together. Valentine, bishop of Interamna, on the other hand, invited young lovers to come to him in secret, where he joined them in the sacrament of matrimony. Claudius learned of this "friend of lovers," and had the bishop brought to the palace. The emperor, impressed with the young priest's dignity and conviction, attempted to convert him to the Roman gods, to save him from otherwise certain execution. Valentine refused to renounce Christianity and imprudently attempted to convert the emperor. As both were unsuccessful, Valentine was executed on, what is thought to be, either February 14 or 24th, as Claudius watched on. But before he could be silenced forever, Valentine, while waiting out his time in prison, fell deeply in love with the jailer’s daughter and on his day of execution, left a note… “From your Valentine”. This sentiment would resound throughout the western world until this day.