(from pagan Rome to pajama-grams in only MM years)
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Every year, in mid-February, guys do the dance. All across this great land that used to be ours, millions of American males nearly forget Valentine’s Day, freak out, and then stampede the stores for flowers & candy, or power-troll the internet for prurient PJs & overdressed teddy bears.
And all because of three guys named Valentine.
How did this happen? Who are these three guys? And why February?
Somehow, at some point, February got this reputation as a month of romance, maybe because it’s cold. Plus, football’s gone and we’re stuck with the wildly popular sport of bowling, where you almost never get to see any serious violence.
According to my exhaustive research, performed in-between today’s Toyota recalls, St. Valentine’s Day contains vestiges of both early Christian and ancient Roman traditions, alongside their other time-honored traditions, like hot-dish picnics and mass public executions.
Holiday Factoid: “vestiges” is the classical Greek plural of “vest.”
On this topic, the Catholic Church appears a bit confused, as they admit to recognizing at least three different Saints, all named Valentine: Valentine, Valentinus, and Val Kilmer (starring Tom Hanks as Forrus Gumpus). All three men were martyred, one of the serious downsides of achieving Sainthoodedness. Coincidence or not, they all died during various Februarys, shortly after forgetting to buy a nice gift.
One legend describes Valentine as a pagan priest who paganized around Rome during the reign of Emperor Claudius II (spelled “too”) in the Third Century (spelled “III”).
Holiday Factoid: The Third Century actually went on for several hundred years, until some bright bulb finally invented “IV” (spelled “hospital feeding tube”).
But on one particularly slow Ides, Claudius outlawed marriage for young men, based on his theory that single guys would be better soldiers, proving that Claudius had never met me. But Valentine continued to perform marriages in secret, until finally, on the Ides of February, around III-thirty, Claudius decreed that Valentine be – as the ancient Roman Navy Seals would put it – “martyred with extreme prejudice.”
Some believe that the Christian church chose to celebrate Valentine’s Feast Day in February in an effort to upstage the pagan Lupercalia festival (held on February Ides), a seriously wine-washed fertility fair dedicated to Faunus Corruptus (the Roman secretary of the Department of Agriculture), as well as to the founders of Rome, Aunt Romulus and Uncle Remus.
Holiday Factoid: “Ides” is the classical Greek plural of “Ide.”
In ancient Rome, Spring officially sprang in February, and it was a time for purification rituals (they didn’t like bowling any more than we do). Houses were ritually swept clean and then, paradoxically, fouled up again by sprinkling the floors with salt and a type of wheat, paradoxically spelt “spelt.” Members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would then gather at the sacred cave of Rome’s famous twins, Romulan and Klingon, lob some spelt around the place, and sacrifice a goat (for fertility) and a dog (for purification) and, paradoxically, they did it all with a straight face.
Afterward, young Roman boys (the Luperkinder and the Crips) would slice the goat’s hide into strips, dip the strips in sacrificial blood and then hit the streets, gently slapping women with the foul things. Rather than mace-blinding the little punk truants, Roman women actually welcomed these advances, because it was believed that getting smacked with pieces of a dead goat would somehow make them more fertile, a characteristic referred to by many anthropologists as “rock stupid.”
I don’t even want to know what they did with the dog.
Later in the day, all these bitterly desperate young women would place their names in a big urn. The city’s less-picky bachelors would then pull a name out of the urn, and the couple would be legally paired for the next CCCLXV days, or until one of them got eaten in public by lions, whichever came first.
Holiday Factoid: I didn’t have to make up anything in the previous IV paragraphs. And we wonder why aliens don’t bother landing here.
Finally, around 498 AD, somebody figured out that whole “IV” thing, and the Third Century came to an end. To celebrate, Pope Gelasius (“Jelly Daddy”) officially declared February XIV as St. Valentine’s Day, and he hosted a huge Lupercalian “goat-strip & light hors d’oeuvres” social mixer. Sadly, the celebration soured when a Hun named Bugs Moran, who had forgotten to buy a nice gift, was massacred by Al Capone.
The first ever ‘valentine’ greeting may have been sent by Priest Valentine himself. While serving time for running around Rome marrying people, he himself fell in love – it may have been the jailor’s daughter, Nihil Corsetus, or it may have been his cellmate, Lancet Maximus. According to legend, he wrote a letter to the apple of his I, which he signed ‘From your Valentine,’ an expression that is still used today, but not in prison.
Although written Valentines were rare until after the year IV-Teen-Hundred, oral Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages. These feudal felicitations were usually yelled back and forth across rutted roads filled with fetid mud, Monty Python plague-carts and abandoned goat strips. Hearty knaves would hail dainty damsels, ushering in the age of the wolf whistle: “Yon Hottie! Carest thou to hie hither to my place? Truly, thou art the bomb! Fuh sooth and shizzle!”
The first commercial Valentine’s Day greeting cards in the U.S. were created in the 1840s by Esther A. Howland, using lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as “scrap,” and then sold at colorful prices known as “insane.”
Holiday Factoid: “Esther A. Howland” can be rearranged to spell “Hot Snared Whale.” Coincidence? I think not.
In America, over L percent of all Valentine’s Day cards are purchased within II days of the day itself. One source claims that a billion Valentine cards are sent each year, while another source puts the number at 188 million, which tells me that both statistics are coming from the Congressional Budget Office.
Interestingly, 85 percent of all Valentine’s Day cards are purchased by women. This is part of a sadistic, coordinated plot, hatched by the notorious FGB (Female Guilt Bombers), whose evil plan is to empty the shelves of cards, just before last call, just to spite all us last-minute losers.
And as us losers age, it gets even trickier. For every 100 single women in their 20s, there are 119 single guys, many of them unindicted. So, in that age bracket, our side can keep up with the shopping mandates. But for every 100 single women in their 60s, there are only 34 of us. Tricky. But then, thankfully, the bell curve begins to flatten: for every 100 single women over age 100, 100% of single guys are dead.
One more note – the average American consumes some 25.7 pounds of candy each year, which means that if St. Valentine, at fighting weight, were to get dipped in chocolate, six random Americans would actually eat him.
Holiday Factoid: There’s a place in Texas called Loving County. There’s also a Heart Butte in Montana, and with a name like “Heart Butte,” I’m guessing they blow the bell curve on per capita candy consumption.
Ultimately, Valentine’s Day, on several levels, is simply a tricky holiday for guys. Witness: I was walking through a store’s Valentine’s Day section when I spotted some “Nobody Else But You!” greeting cards. I thought, “What a nice confirmation of one’s commitment!”
And then I noticed.
The cards were sold in packs of six…