I wanted to be more informed about Valentine's Day so I went to my web search engine and found some interesting bits of history. This is quite fascinating. I can't relay all I learned, but here are few highlights worth sharing.
In Ancient Rome February 14 was a holiday honoring Juno, the Queen of Roman gods and Goddesses. It was an innocent child's game at first but soon came to be a pagan dating ritual. So much so that the soldiers were getting laid right and left which made it difficult to force them off to war. This didn't set well with Emperor Claudius II and he banned the practice.
A Jewish Levite named Valenstein felt pity for the soldiers. "True, there's no sex after marriage but, what, these young boys get no courtship even?" Valenstein said, shrugging his shoulders. So he started secretly arranging courtship for the soldiers and marriages if they wished. This pissed off Claudius and in 270 he had Valenstein beheaded on, of all dates, February 14.
People felt sad about Valenstein and started commemorating his death by sending each other love messages every February 14. Hallius Marcus, a Roman business owner, got the idea to capitalize on all the guilt men had in relationships between them and their loved ones so in honor of Valenstein started a greeting card business the very next year. This grew into a multi-national firm and his descendants eventually moved to America and founded the shortened name, 'Hallmark', which exists today serving the needs of men who have no fucking idea whatsoever on how to patch things up and get laid.
Ahh, necessity, the Jewish mother of invention......I haven't a clue how it was changed to valentine.
No comments:
Post a Comment