Today is St. Valentine’s Day, another stupid day that gives more boost to capitalism and materialism while making you think that you are celebrating love. It is sold to you as the day of love. The day of love is every day. Love has many facets. Love is shown every day. Love is shown even in simple things. Love is about a married couple sticking through thick and thin. Love is about sacrifice. Love is about self-denial. Love is about telling people the truth. Love is about transparency. Love is nationalism. Love is patriotism. Love is sacred.
But in this horrible era of a liberal, ideal world where everything is fake, they come up with St. Valentine’s Day in the name of love. And yet, since the introduction of divorce in Malta back in 2011, Malta has seen 4,472 marriages ending in divorce, whereas “in the first 17 days of 2024, there have already been 19 divorce cases in Malta.” And yet, here comes the 14th of February, and we are inundated with soft toys, red hearts, red balloons, roses, chocolate hearts, and anything else you can think of that has nothing to do with true love. And yet, here comes the local media, annoying us with celebrities proposing to the other half while they are abroad—the new fake way of turning something private and special into yet another publicity stunt and into another social media gossip.
What is the true origin of this so-called celebration?
“The earliest possible origin story of Valentine’s Day is the pagan holiday Lupercalia. Occurring for centuries in the middle of February, the holiday celebrates fertility. Men would strip naked and sacrifice a goat and a dog. Young boys would then take strips of hide from the sacrificed animals and use it to whip young women, to promote fertility. Lupercalia was popular and one of the few pagan holidays still celebrated 150 years after Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire.”
Ancient Rome celebrated Lupercalia, also called Lupercal, as a pastoral festival every year from February 13 to February 15. Its purpose was to purify the city and encourage fertility and health. Due to the purification tools known as februa, which served as the foundation for the month of February, lupercalia was also known as dies Februatus. Originally called Februa (“Purifications” or “Purgings”), the festival took its name from the februum that was used on the occasion. It was also called Februatus and was used to refer to a number of things, including February (mensis Februarius), the month of the festival, a purported purification deity named Februus, and Juno Februalis, Februlis, or Februata in her capacity as that month’s patron goddess. Ovid links februare to a “purging” Etruscan word. In the past, people thought that the name Lupercalia had something to do with the worship of Lycaean Pan, who was thought to be the Greek counterpart of Faunus, and the ancient Greek festival of the Arcadian Lykaia, which celebrated wolves. This belief was established by Evander. With the exception of a goatskin girdle, Justin depicts a cult image of ‘the Lycaean god, whom the Greeks call Pan and the Romans Lupercus’ as naked. The statue was located in the Lupercal, the cave where it is said that Lupa, the she-wolf, breastfed Romulus and Remus. The cave was located at the base of the Palatine Hill, the site where Rome is believed to have been founded by Romulus. Though its meaning and etymology are unknown, the festival’s name most likely comes from lupus, which means “wolf”. The fact that an animal predator is essential to male rites of passage may explain the wolf’s name. No god going by the name “Lupercus” has been found, despite Justin’s claim.
“When Pope Gelasius came to power in the late fifth century, he put an end to Lupercalia. Soon after, the Catholic church declared February 14 to be a day of feasts to celebrate the martyred Saint Valentine.
According to Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Lupercalia was ‘clearly a very popular thing, even in an environment where the Christians are trying to close it down.’ In an interview with NPR Lenski theorizes that the feast was meant to replace Lupercalia. ‘So there’s reason to think that the Christians might instead have said, Okay, we’ll just call this a Christian festival,’ he said.
Though it is not clear how St. Valentine’s Day became a romantic holiday, some, like Jack B. Oruch, a professor at the University of Kansas, argues that the poet Geoffrey Chaucer was the first person to link Valentine’s Day to romance in his poem The Parlement of Foules. He suggests “that Chaucer might have linked Valentine’s Day to romance more or less by chance—Valentine’s Day is approximately the time when European birds start mating. Later poets, including Shakespeare, followed Chaucer’s lead and helped create the romantic connotations we have today.”
Whether pagan or not, whether another fraud accepted by the Catholic Church, it is another fake celebration of this fake world, including the fake concept of love that the liberals and the idealists are trying to sell you.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/saint-st-valentines-day