I'm usually not a cynical person. I love the gifts from my family but there are so many reasons why I loathe Valentine's Day like: the fact that it's a completely commercial holiday, the annoying way that some people always ask me about my relationship status on this day, and the fact that most of my so-called boyfriends in the past decided to end things on or near Valentine's Day. I tried not to be bitter this year and looked up the origins of this day so I could understand why people celebrate it. This is what I found.
One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.
Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured. According to one legend, an imprisoned Valentine actually sent the first “valentine” greeting himself after he fell in love with a young girl–possibly his jailor’s daughter–who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed “From your Valentine,” an expression that is still in use today.
http://www.history.com/topics/valentines-day/history-of-valentines-day
It deals with a lot of death but it's still romantic, right?
Then I scrolled down and found a darker origin, which makes me think that V-Day should be a second Halloween.
While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial–which probably occurred around A.D. 270–others claim that the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.
To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. They would then strip the goat’s hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, gently slapping both women and crop fields with the goat hide. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because it was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.
Sacrifice and basically a woman lottery? How is that romantic? The horror lover in me thinks that this theory is sort of cool but I still don't get how people turned this day into a day of love. I've decided not to resent this day but to celebrate February 14th as another Halloween.
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