Valentine's Day History Lesson

By Rich Smith, 02-14-2018

Happy Valentine's Day! If you are on the road and away from your family, friends, or significant other, this day could be very lonely. But it could be worse. It could be much, much worse...

A few years back, NPR published a piece about the dark history of Valentine's Day. And wow, was it dark! The origin of Valentine's Day started with a Roman festival called Lupercalia. The Roman men would get up early and go "hunt" a goat for sacrifice. I use the term hunt loosely, as they would just gather one from the field. Then they would sacrifice this goat, remove the hide, and whip the women of their village with it. The women would actually line up for the whipping, believing that it would make them fertile. Then each woman would put their name in a large jar and the now drunk and naked Roman men would draw names. The woman each man drew would become his match for the day...or longer if it seemed to work out.

Many years later the Romans executed two men named Valentine, both on February 14th but years apart. Years later the Catholic Church recognized these two men and created St Valentine's Day, a religious holiday to be celebrated on February 14th. A few centuries later, the Catholic Church and their current Pope combined their new holiday and Lupercalia in an attempt to remove the pagan rituals. All this really ended up doing was eliminating the goat sacrifice and added some clothes for the men...until after the offline Tinder like drawing was completed.

Over the years the holiday transformed and became more about love. Commercialism has slowly replaced Hedonism in regards to how the holiday is celebrated. I grew up in Kansas, so I've always been familiar with how the Hallmark Company helped "create" the modern day holiday and thus saved their business. It's reported that Americans will spend over $19 billion dollars on Valentine's Day items this year. The includes the purchase of over 65 million pounds of chocolate and over 2 billion roses!

I saw a meme yesterday where a nurse was asked what she'd be doing for Valentine's Day. The answer was, "well it's Wednesday, so I'll be working." So, from all of us at Atlas to all of you working today, Happy Valentine's Day! Thank goodness we aren't Romans. I'm not sure where I'd find a goat!