Happy Lupercalia Day!
Like Christmas, Easter, and Halloween, the origins of Valentine’s Day can be traced back to our pagan past. From February 13-15, the ancient Romans honored the gods Lupercus and Faunus, as well as the legendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, in a celebration called Lupercalia. In addition to great feasts, the festivities included the coupling of young women with men who would draw women’s names from a box, pairing them up until the next year’s celebration.
One legend has it that a priest named Valentine disobeyed Emperor Claudius II’s decree that soldiers remain bachelors (Claudius thought the soldiers would be more focused on killing if not distracted by wives) by secretly performing marriage ceremonies. Valentine was imprisoned where he fell in love with his jailor’s daughter. Before being executed (beheaded) on February 14, 269, he wrote a letter to his new love which he signed ‘From your Valentine’. He was later named a saint.
Seizing the opportunity to establish yet another Christian holiday while destroying a pagan one, Pope Gelasius declared Lupercalia immoral and renamed the holiday St. Valentine’s Day. And the tradition of picking a sex partner out of a box was replaced with picking the name of a saint. Oh, fun.
Did you know? There are over 10,000 saints and Valentine is the patron saint of not only love, but bee keepers, epilepsy, fainting, and plague. Ah plague, now that’s romantic!
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