Good job Ken avoided the REAL skinny on the history, it’s MUCH more horrible than the above: if you really want to celebrate the true St. Valentine’s spirit, then all you young men should be out there with raw and bloody strips of sacrificed goat, running around practically naked, thwacking away at any girls you can find to keep ‘em fertile because the Februal fifteenth of February was the ancient Roman festival of the Lupercalia and, just like Christmas and so many other of our festivals, it’s something gross and Roman that lies behind our modern Day—so I say “Io! Faune! Bring on the sacrificial goats! And just remember to hold your nose!”
Then of course there is St. Valentine themselves: there were in fact somewhere between zero and four of him, one of whom might just have been the great Gnostic thinker Valentinus (whose heretical attitude toward sex was so much more fun than the mainstream Christian one in the second century). All that is known about them amounts pretty-well to ‘other than Valentinus who is solidly historical, some of him might possibly have existed’.
The twittering of romantic love (as distinct from, say, goat and girl abusing; or on the whole really rather preferring martyrdom) on what I’m going to suddenly start calling ‘SV Day’ seems to have emerged from birds in the High Middle Ages and dropped like manna from the skies. As Chaucer says in his ‘Parlement of Foules’ that
For this was on Seynt Valentynes dayWhan every foul cometh ther to chese his make
And all too soon SV Day love was no longer strictly for the birds and mere humans started choose and to call each other Valentine in their lust and liking. And, just like the birds and Valentinus and just possibly the Romans, the essence of the exercise was implicit connubiality: dating, and with any luck mating.
Good job Ken avoided the REAL skinny on the history, it’s MUCH more horrible than the above: if you really want to celebrate the true St. Valentine’s spirit, then all you young men should be out there with raw and bloody strips of sacrificed goat, running around practically naked, thwacking away at any girls you can find to keep ‘em fertile because the Februal fifteenth of February was the ancient Roman festival of the Lupercalia and, just like Christmas and so many other of our festivals, it’s something gross and Roman that lies behind our modern Day—so I say “Io! Faune! Bring on the sacrificial goats! And just remember to hold your nose!”
Then of course there is St. Valentine themselves: there were in fact somewhere between zero and four of him, one of whom might just have been the great Gnostic thinker Valentinus (whose heretical attitude toward sex was so much more fun than the mainstream Christian one in the second century). All that is known about them amounts pretty-well to ‘other than Valentinus who is solidly historical, some of him might possibly have existed’.
The twittering of romantic love (as distinct from, say, goat and girl abusing; or on the whole really rather preferring martyrdom) on what I’m going to suddenly start calling ‘SV Day’ seems to have emerged from birds in the High Middle Ages and dropped like manna from the skies. As Chaucer says in his ‘Parlement of Foules’ that
For this was on Seynt Valentynes dayWhan every foul cometh ther to chese his makeAnd all too soon SV Day love was no longer strictly for the birds and mere humans started choose and to call each other Valentine in their lust and liking. And, just like the birds and Valentinus and just possibly the Romans, the essence of the exercise was implicit connubiality: dating, and with any luck mating.