Not for the first time, Valentine’s Day all but passed me by. Not that I was unaware – how could I be, given that social media was full of it? – but I find the whole thing so utterly worthless, unless you are a florist, a greetings card manufacturer or a restaurant owner. To me, the old Grinch, it’s right down there with Black Friday, Trick or Treat and all the other ‘Days’ we are encourage to celebrate in order to raise profits for various businesses. I really can’t be arsed with it.
Apparently, Valentine’s Day is A Special Day For Lovers, presumably unlike the other 364 days of the year, which are apparently not special days for lovers. It’s not as if the history of Valentine’s Day (I was going to abbreviate it to VD, until I realised this might not be slightly problematical) is entirely clear.
The National Public Radio (NPR) website suggests its origins may hark back to ancient Roman times: “From Feb. 13 to 15, the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia. The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain.” Blimey. No red roses, chocolates and a romantic meal, then? It gets better.
NPR continues: The Roman romantics “were drunk. They were naked.”It gets better: Young women would line up for the men to hit them. They believed this would make them fertile. The brutal fete included a matchmaking lottery in which young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then be, um, coupled up for the duration of the festival — or longer, if the match was right.
I’d like to make clear at this point “coupled up” means three days of shagging. Fair play if they managed that.
Now call me old fashioned but I am not entirely convinced that slaughtering a goat and a dog, in order to later whip women with their hides, does not convey what I consider to be the definition of romance. But one thing is for sure: everything changed in The Year Of Our Lord 1913.
A company called Hallmark Cards of Kansas City in the USA USA USA began mass-producing Valentine cards, the word spread around the world, people dropped the awkward slaughtering and flagellation bits and the origins of the Valentine’s Day we know today began to evolve.
These days, couples – dare we call them lovers? – do their romantic things and, somewhat tediously, share the details on social media, how they love their partner “to the moon and back” (why the moon? I love mine to Neptune and back, so there). This year, for the first time, I have seen AI generated images of folk on social media celebrating The Big Day and let’s face it, nothing says romance like an AI generated image. And don’t start me with people who have been married for 25 years having “date nights“. That’s just called going out.
In all seriousness, though, if celebrating Valentine’s Day floats your boat, then good luck to you. It’s a far nicer thing to do than, say, slaughtering your dog, although I would ask the question as to why one can’t be romantic for the rest of the year? Frankly, I don’t need a day designated by Ancient Romans to tell my partner how much I love her, nor do I need to announce it to the world or use AI. I don’t leave all my shopping until Black Friday, I don’t confine my chocolate purchasing to Easter, I don’t just buy nice things for people at Christmas.
If you are less of a Grinch and a cynic than me, I do hope you enjoy your VD. I suppose in some ways it reminds us to love and be kind to one another. Mind you, if we needed reminding of that in the first place, it’s not hard to work out why the world is in such a mess at the moment.
