Today is Valentine’s Day — both readers know that we don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. Well, that’s not exactly true… we don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day on Valentine’s Day, we do it a day or so before or after. If you don’t know why, and are even interested, you can check the blog entries for past Valentine’s Days.
Even though today is supposedly one of, if not the, most romantic days of the year, it actually marks the date of the execution of St. Valentine by the Roman emperor Claudius II during the third century AD. No one is exactly sure of the crime he was executed for, but the most popular theory is that he’d been officiating at the weddings of soldiers, despite the fact that marriage had been outlawed for them. Apparently, the emperor thought that love and romance made for weaker soldiers.
A long time before St. Valentine’s execution, February 14 had come to be associated with fertility ± and blood. Between February 13 and 15, Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia by sacrificing a goat and a dog and then whipping naked women with the hides, all in the interest of making women more fertile. In the fifth century, AD, Pope Gelasius I outlawed Lupercalia and officials declared February 14 to be the feast of St. Valentine — Valentine’s Day.
Even though Valentine’s Day continues to associated with hearts and flowers and candy, in the last century, it has also continued to associated with blood splatter and murder, like:
The Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929.
The unsolved murder of young lovers Jesse McBane and Patricia Mann that occurred on Valentine’s Day 1971.
The unsolved murder of teenagers Nicholas Kunselman and Stephanie Hart (who were dating) on Valentine’s Day 2000.
The murder of Reeva Steenkamp by Oscar Pistorius on Valentine’s Day 2013.
The murder-suicide of an elderly couple in Alabama on Valentine’s Day 2015.
The U.S. school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day in 2018.
But today is Valentine’s Day, a special day for love, and love is never wrong. Charles Schulz said that all you need is love…. but a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.
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