Screw Hallmark

Well we're coming up once again on another Hallmark holiday. Yes its that time of year again, Valentine's Day. A day we're we spend too much money in an effort to tell our Significant Other that we love them, something that we should be doing everyday anyway. It’s also a day where single folk get to feel rather miserable about not having a significant other. Since this will be only the second or third Valentine's Day that I've been with someone, I understand that feeling completely. My normal answer was to drink myself into insensibility, which sometimes ended up with me waking up next to one of my equally depressed single female friends.....both of us naked. I'm normally all for hooking up with one of my friends because we both just need to get laid, but in that situation its usually known what is going on ahead of time. For some reason after drunken Valentine's Day sex you both feel the need to justify why you don't want to be in a relationship with each other, and try to do it in such a way to not hurt the other person's feelings.

Back to the question at hand, why do we do this to ourselves? I did some research and discovered as with most of our modern holidays this one yet again is based in a pagan holiday. Anyone surprised? Anyone, anyone, didn't think so. The short version of what I found is Feb 14 was originally a feast to some pagan god/goddess of love/lust/fertility. Basic version went something like this: Any single females of marrying age in a village had their names put into a big old pot/hat/whatever. At that time any single males would come forward and draw names from said pot. The couple where then paired up for anywhere from the rest of the day or in some accounts for the entire year. The idea was they would fall in love (optional), get married (probably optional), and start producing children (not optional). If it didn't work, then come next Feb 14, back in the pot you go! So we've now turned the entire human courtship ritual into a lottery. Now this is where the history gets a little vague. My guess on what went on is, the practice of a human lottery, at least the pairing for the entire year anyway, probably fell by the way-side. So now we're left with a wonderful celebration of love and passion, in other words probably one of those celebrations where everyone get drunk and goes out and gets it on in the fields (reminds me of high school). Anyway, of course the Christians come through, see people drinking, having sex, and generally having a good time of it and immediately thought, "nope this has to stop!" So they go back through their immediate histories and locate the story of a priest named Valentine. Here was a guy who was pretty much just going along minding his own business being a priest, right? All of a sudden then governor, king, section sergeant whatever makes the decision, "no one else can get married until I say so!" Little known fact, this was seen as a punishment for something or other, in actuality it was because after his 6th wife, he was trying to keep the people from making his mistake :-p. Seriously though, after this came down, Valentine decides that he his going to continue marry people in secret. Obviously he was found out, and martyred (stoned to death probably) on Feb 14th.

Such a joyful thought for a holiday isn’t it? So when you’re out looking at the $80 bouquet of roses for your sweetheart remember, your celebrating the anniversary of someone being stoned to death. Happy Valentine’s Day!