Valentine’s Day was originally based off of the Pagan holiday Lupercalia. Lupercalia was a holiday used to commemorate fertility, both of the land and women.
It seems Pagans are the only people with creativity in their bones, coming up with these holidays.
Anyways, Pagans also have creepy in their bones, because traditions of Lupercalia include taking goat hide and dipping in blood and patting crop fields and women.
Don’t worry, the women totally okay with this, as they though it would make them even more fertile.
Yay for childbirth!
The holiday also serves as a matchmaking ordeal, where bachelors of the villages would draw the names of maidens of the village from an urn. If only dating was that easy these days.
To make Lupercalia more Christian-like, they moved the date of it to Feb. 15. But soon, Lupercalia was banned and St. Valentine’s Day was put into affect on Feb. 14 in the 400s.
It is not clear which Valentine the holiday is named after, because there were at least three of them. And all of them were martyrs.
One story describes Valentine as a priest, who married single soldiers against the will of the Emperor. He was killed.
Another story states Valentine helped Christians escape from prison. He was also put to death.
The last story states Valentine was imprisoned and he fell in love with a girl, to which he sent the very first Valentine.
Aaaand he was put to death.
I’m just kidding.
All or none of these stories could be true, but nevertheless, love is the center point. And while it may be just a little ridiculous to have one whole day to commemorate love more than the other days, it’s amazing to imagine that someone would love someone so much to sacrifice so much is something that needs commemoration.
People sacrifice love and care for the people that matter in their lives everyday. There are our troops,
our doctors,
our teachers,
and many more people in many other professions that care for people they do not even know.
So the next time you’re feeling lonely on Valentine’s Day, just remember the people that care for others without thinking about themselves. Try and channel a little bit of that.
It can be hard being alone on Valentine’s Day. Some people can handle it, but for sure there are people out there who do not find this day to be pleasant for them.
Instead of focusing on receiving love on Valentine’s Day, focus on giving it, like those people that give love every day.
Also, it’s just a day that was a Pagan holiday-turned-Christian, and now greeting card companies are getting filthy rich off of it.
Don’t believe me? The number of cards exchanged on Valentine’s Day comes in second to the number of cards exchanged on Christmas. That number is 151 million.
Imagine how much paper that is. Imagine how many people that is, pouring out their hearts to another person.
Check out more outrageous numbers for last year’s Valentine’s Day on CNN.
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