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I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this, then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it, as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women, and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well;
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

Walt Whitman – I Sing the Body Electric – Stanza IV

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Valentine’s Day is a concoction. Everyone knows that. But it’s history goes back further than the middle of the 1800′s. Are you surprised by that number? Try ancient Rome and the Lupercalia (traditionally February 15th). This day of love sung by troubadours romancing the European court ladies has roots older than Christianity. This means that “Singles Awareness Day” (I love that euphemism) is a deep-seeded part of the Western collective unconscious. Worse yet, the Catholics co-opted the Roman celebration and entangled a few obscure footnote saints to insure that it stuck.

The Lupercalia celebrates Lupercus, a goatskin clad fertility deity. Priests would sacrifice and skin a goat, then run through the streets with the bloody skin. Women would rush the skins hoping to be touched by the bloody hide. This was to insure that they would produce children. PETA would have a field day with this version of the holiday.

To tone down the celebrations that were still being followed well into the early Roman Catholic history, the Church pronounced a feast day celebrating St. Valentine and St. George and other men who were only remembered in name. This holiday was declared to occur on, you guessed it, February 14th. This didn’t start until the end of the fifth century AD. What gets muddy is which St. Valentine. There are three on record. None of them have any kind of extensive bios in the Who’s Who of Saints (aka – the Catholic Encyclopedia). Coincidentally, though, all three were martyrs (most saints are martyrs) and their great acts of faith and devotion are all ascribed to 02/14. As of 1969, the Catholic church no longer celebrates St. Valentine’s day. The events of the lives of these saints are apocryphal at best and the Vatican decided it best to only celebrate dates of well-documented saints.

This lapse of historical content didn’t keep the rest of Europe from celebrating the holiday though. In the 19th century, the vatican donated relics of St. Valentine to Dublin, Ireland. Relics are also supposedly in Roquemaure, France and Stephansom, Vienna. In Dublin, a gold casket carrying the relics are transported through town in celebration of the young and those in love. In 1989, Roquemaure created La Fête du Baiser, the kissing festival, occuring the Saturday after Valentine’s Day. Roquemaure history recounts the miraculous healing of grape vines four years after the arrival of St. Valentine’s relics in 1868.All this history is well and good. It even provides solid grounds for this holiday that causes mass hysteria in the addle-brained love lorn. But it doesn’t account for the mass commercialism. That didn’t begin until the 14th century when the era of humanism and courtly love were just beginning to flourish. From that point on, secular, rather than spiritual, love would be the main focus of the holiday. Songs, poetry, art all would focus on the passions of ancient kings and queens and the trysts of the gods. By the 19th century, the English custom of exchanging anonymous cards professing amour would transplant itself to the United States. At which point all hell breaks loose.

The next thing we know we are hip deep in chocolates and moonie-eyed teddy bears. The holiday has become a ridiculous caricature. Another western holiday with lost and muddied roots. Each generation defines it according to the sentiments of the day. With generation-x (my generation), it is attacked by the bitter lonely and covered in gelatinous sucrose by the 99-percenters. And after the superficial research I have done a ‘la Wikipedia.org (see the links below), I have come to my own conclusions.

This holiday, wether celebrated by the spiritual or secular, is about passion. The Saints Valentine died for their beliefs. Women rushing to meet the Lupercunian priests wanted deeply to bare children. The artists and troubadours of the middle-ages wanted to recount the acts of golden and lost ages. For all of them, each age wanted to celebrate passion. This is my vision of the holiday. It is the day that I tell family, friends, and those that share some aspect of my beliefs that I love them and that I want them to continue to live passionately for each other and for themselves. Valentine’s Day is the day that I remind myself what I live for – art and passion.

References:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Valentine

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There is a history to it. There was a St. Valentine. Actually, three. None of these martyrs actually have any relationship with the Holiday itself. There is plenty of documentation that February 14th is a day Saint’s day. But once again, there is nothing to suggest that this Saint is celebrated by exchanging declarations of love. Actually, the relationship is more coincedental. It was often abserved by Chaucer and other authors that birds begin to seek mates about the same time as February 14th. Most likely embroidered by balladeers and troubadors, this holiday gets its romantic touch because of Nature’s cycle.

St. Valentine’s Day gained it’s place on the Western calendar during the Victorian period. The exchange of cards and letters became common with the development of organized mail delivery services and inexpensive print reproduction methods. It wasn’t long before cards were commercially available for any occaission. And now, in the Twenty-first century, we are sending Valentine’s Day cards via electrons.

I think this anecdoatal relation to a religious figure and the inherant commercialism of the holiday allow me to make what I wish of it. To me, a holiday to celebrate love, passion and poetry is more needed in this world than a day to celebrate dead men and mysterious rites of seasons. With this in mind, I make my own greeting cards and have for the last several years. I send them out to friends, family, and businesses that promote a positive sexual attitudes.

Celebrate the day with me. Tell me what you will do for your lover. If not for your lover, then for your fellow babies. If not for your fellow babies, then for yourself. Remember: love for the world begins with a love for the self. or Like George Carlin says, “I would rather let my kids see two people fucking, than let them watch two people kill eachother.”