Lupercalia: The Far Hornier & More Metal Holiday Predating Valentine’s Day
Or: The Sexy, Super Metal Origins of Valentine’s Day
The cliché about Valentine’s Day is that it was invented to sell candy, flowers, and greeting cards. Some scoff at the holiday that has come to celebrate romantic love due to the associated crass commercialism. In fairness, crass commercialism would likely exist in February regardless. CVS sells chocolate and stuffed animals year-round.
Other, more boring people think the holiday is just about men buying things for women. They created an unofficial Steak and BlowJob Day a month later as a counterbalance. Advertising the transactional nature of your sexual relationships sure is an option.
Wanna celebrate tonight? SlutChurch is at Tabu- doors at 8, show at 9.
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There are even those who focus on the Christian connection to the date. It is SAINT Valentine we’re referencing after all. But, like most commercial and Christian holidays, there is a way more metal origin.
There is some debate over the identity of the man known as St Valentine. The Catholic church recognizes three different guys with the name, all of whom died brutally.
One particularly popular legend has it that in 270 AD, there was a Roman emperor so vicious that he earned the nickname Claudius the Cruel. He loooooved waging war but believed that young men’s silly attachments to their lovers and families kept them from being adequately willing to die for him. His solution? Banning marriage in Rome.
A true romantic and old-school social justice warrior, Valentine continued to preside over weddings in secret, in spite of the decree. When he was discovered, he was sentenced to death by the stunning combination of being beaten to death by clubs and then beheaded.
To add a romantic ripple to the story, some say that he wrote love letters to the jailer’s daughter while he sat imprisoned, awaiting his death. According to the tale, he signed them “from your Valentine.” The execution was carried out on February 14th.
The church then chose this as his feast day. Nearly 2 centuries later, we celebrate by having a really hard time making a dinner reservation, which is inarguably better than the whole death-by-clubs thing. But you know that’s not the true beginning of the holiday. Like most of the big holidays on the Christian calendar, there was originally a pagan festival that happened at the same time each year.
Far earlier in Roman history, pagans celebrated the fertility ritual of Lupercalia each year on February 15th. THAT was a real party. It kicked off with naked priests engaging in animal sacrifice. Their blood was smeared with a knife on the foreheads of young people. The skin of slaughtered goats was cut into strips, which was then used to make girdles and thongs… and also to slap naked women. I envision very early flogging kink.
It remains a bit of a mystery about how naked people got, about how voluntary the goat skin slappings were and whether the event was more PG-13 or fully X rated.
It’s also not entirely clear if there is a connection between Lupercalia and Valentine’s Day. Reasons to suspect that they are include: the festival’s focus on fertility and legends of an intriguing Lupercalia practice where the names of the city’s young maidens were placed in an urn. Bachelors would draw a name and the couple would be paired for a year, potentially to be married. That’s somewhere between a key party and speed dating with real stakes.
Though it survived Christianity for a good long while, Lupercalia was outlawed at the end of the 5th century by some real party pooper of a Pope named Gelasius. He was also the one who declared February 14th to be the feast of St Valentine-- yet another argument in favor of their connection.
It wasn’t until the Middle Ages, though, that the date became associated with romantic love. Supposedly the first recorded written Valentine was sent by a 15th century prince to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, but that’s probably not true. It’s also important to note that folks weren’t getting married for love back then, but that it was common for romances to spark between members of the court-- folks who could usually not be together officially.
This ancient idea of courtly love – a romance between a knight and a married aristocratic lady whom he cannot have- resonates even today. We still use tales of pining for an unreachable lover as the basis of our romantic fiction.
So now we have modern Valentine’s Day, a holiday associated with romance, sending love notes…… and a chubby, cherubic Roman baby god. Cupid, after all, was the child of Venus, the Roman goddess of love.
However you choose to celebrate, whether it’s with a romantic dinner, passive-aggressive candy hearts, or whipping your boo with the skin of a slaughtered goat: I hope you have a great Valentine’s Day.
