i am no scholar, so please refrain from making an ass out of yourself in any correction you may choose to point out here. your douche baggery would be monumental
all about Valentine’s Day
i guess we should start here with a bit of information about paganism. pagan comes from the latin root paganus. this roughly translates to mean olden country dweller, and is often translated to rustic. from the modern theological perspective, it encompasses all spiritual and culture beliefs that can be easily defined as:
- folk religion
- belief in multiple gods or entities
- demonstrations of these religions or beliefs
based on these criteria, Catholicism (and other nonspecific Christian religions) are pagan, though they refuse to believe they fall into this category in the slightest. Christians have nearly always been caustic when it comes to religion differing from itself. originally, Valentine’s day was believed to be a Roman holiday based around Lupercalus/Frebruata Juno celebrations. Frebruata is known as a goddess of fertility and sexuality. Lupercus was associated as the god of the pasture (and supposedly all that resides there in). the feast of Lupercalia occurred in their honor. Catholics, as with many other “pagan” festivals, bastardized it and stripped it of its original context by suppressing its normal practice. tack on a Catholic saint’s name and call it something new. obviously the first few years would be difficult, but enough people integrating changes out of convenience, indifference, or fear. next thing you know *poof! nearly “instant” Christian holiday.
this is just one belief in its origins. there are several others depending on who you talk to. at some points the theories run parallel to each other and even converge. this general relativity is commonly a sign of core truths in all of the stories, and shows that you could look past a lot of the information and read only the subtext. that all of the theories are correct, and have been slightly embellished over the years, appearing to be separate from each other.
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THE St Valentine is actually an amalgam. he was up to 11 people all of whom had their own days of celebration under Catholicism. back in 1969, this was bunched together and became what it is today. there is a further amalgam in the fact that it is primarily celebrating Valantine of Rome and Valentine of Terni. Significant speculation in the past shows that though all records show them to have died nearly a hundred years apart, they may actually be the same individual and records may be incorrect. as all of the celebrated Valentine,s were killed or cannonized on the same day, it is also speculated that they were ALL the same person, reinterpreted through folklore and misinformation.. so there you go.. 11 saints and a lot of condensing and confusion.
we can blame Chaucer (the man who wrote the Canterbury Tales) for the direct modern association of love with the holiday. “for this was on St. Valentine’s day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate”… Chaucer Chaucer Chaucer. thanks. no really. Parliament of Foules is where this quote started. English society began associating lovers with the feast of Valentine because on that day the birds start to fall in love… such a simple thing.. i really wish there was a bit more to it, but from all i have found, there isnt.
the traditional sending of “Valentines” can be attributed to the custom started of men and women writing love letters to the patron Saint Valentine. Valentine of Rome, being a miracle worker supposedly healed a jailers daughter who lost her sight. after her sight returned, he gave her a letter that was signed “from your Valentine”. whether this is fact or another yarn is up for debate, but the giving of notes to one you care for continues in this manner.
more likely, this appears to be a replacement for other old pagan ceremonies where names were chosen out of a pot. boys and the girls (whose names they had pulled) were then bound together for the remainder fo the year, details on what their relationships were like are unknown to me. the church tried to take advantage of this tradition by having people choose the names of saints from said pot instead of the names of girls. people who pulled names were to emulate, for the next year, the values that their saint was known for. how bad could that be right? well what if you got stuck with a really really really bad or lame saint? examples:
- Jesus Malverde, the patron saint of drug traffickers (i dont know that he was cannonized, just that the locals loved him enough to call him a saint and made a church in his honor)
- Ignatius of Antioch, saint of throat ailments
- St Vitus, patron saint of comedians, dancers and epilepsy
- St Zita, saint of lost keys
- Saint Nicholas, (yup, the one and only Santa Claus) patron saint of prostitutes among other more widely known things
not being Catholic, these may or not be accurate as the interwebs sometimes lies to us, but you get my point here. it could be terrible beyond belief if you pulled the wrong name. it would be worse than pulling the smelly girl’s name in the pagan ceremony.
now is when we get to the boring part of the holiday’s history.. fast forward a few hundred years. it is the mid 1800′s. Mass greeting cards are first produced out of lace and sold to the public. nothing of interest has happened since then. it is all just the same old story titled “how to make a buck off a holyday” as written by Paimi Monet lace turned to paper, paper turned to un-recycled card-stock. card-stock got crappy cartoon characters and pictures of the BRATZ stenciled on them candy candy candy. expensive gifts and jewelry. bad Zales diamond commercials, red heart shaped mylar balloons that knock you in the head on your bus ride to work, more bad candy. swoony women, heart ache and disappointment, missed expectations and occasionally, a pretty damn good day..
venereal disease.. i was going to tie this in somehow. oh yeah. HAPPY VD every one.
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humorous image of the Valentine guillotine was found here www.pizzabytheslice.com
best part, and unfortunately they do not mention if it was on purpose, was that many of the amalgam Valentines were beheaded.. i dont know how many, and i do not think that the guillotine was used, but it is still humorous.
WW2 VD poster was found on nih.gov
Valentine’s day = Hallmark’s largest day of profit for the whole year.
you may claim to be a scholar but you are for sure the biggest insult on the human race. what gives you the right to talk such filth and nonsense about us Catholics and our beliefs. just because you dnt believe in anything but whatever you write that doesn’t make you an expert or a scholar..it makes you a pagan and a liar..next time you want to write an article get your facts right..fact no 1. there were no gods or godesses (thats just a myth). second fact there is only one true God, third fact..since there were no gods or godesses we didnot steal valentine’s day. fourth fact St. Valentine was a good person who spread the word of love and joy among all.. so now that you have all your facts (courtesy of me) you cockroach of a person you can go ahead and write your article all over again…oh and no need of saying sorry to us…we Catholics are so forgiving that by the time you finish reading this i’d have already forgiven you
as stated in my initial paragraph:
“i am no scholar, so please refrain from making an ass out of yourself in any correction you may choose to point out here. your douche baggery would be monumental”
by your insistence that i am NOT a scholar, you have impressed me with your douche baggery for sure. next time read the first paragraph, it makes you look like less of a fool.
counter points to your maligned and over zealous reaction to my research:
1) not once did i state there was one true god, or many gods. i was referencing peoples beliefs.
2) please read item 1.
3) yes you did steal the holiday. if you are correct in your statement that there is 1 true god, this does NOT change the fact that history existed before Christianity. other religions, before being converted did in fact have their own holidays, and yes, February 14th was one of them. can you truly deny that? seriously.. just think about how foolish you sound stating that..
4) dis i state that he did not exist? no i did not. did i state that even the catholic church, that you believe in, is unsure WHICH Velentine they canonized? YES I AM.
if i am an insult to humanity they you are far far worse. please. print this off and take it to your local Catholic church. ask for forgiveness for mistreating me..
no, seriously.
I am sure father whats his name down the street will read over my post, your arguments, and my replies, then he will bitch slap you for being a dick to a stranger.
thanks again for repeating history.. persecuting someone for their differences and then forgiving them. as someone who lives in Karachi, Pakistan (per your IP address) i would hope you could look at the history of Catholicism in your region. then revamp your opinion.
Here you are, just another Catholic asshole trying to ram their beliefs down someone else?s throat (obviously you are taking a break from having your hands down a 5 year old males pants long enough to write this email). Amazingly you are from the middle east, a non-catholic region of the world, where your beliefs are of a minority standpoint yet you feel the urge to send a message to Fnord for having a difference of opinion (wow do you want to be the pot or the kettle?) And this is only after you are obviously doing a Google search on Valentine’s day in FUCKING JULY!!!! For fuck’s sake, at least research Valentine’s Day in February, you fucking twit, around the actual holiday.
And how are you positive that there is only 1 true god? Are you so old that you were alive back then and know this for a fact? Or are you just going off of what you were told and therefore CHOOSE to believe? That’s right, you chose to believe in the Catholic religion. That doesn’t make it right nor does it make it wrong, you close minded freak. For all you know the Bible, in which you choose to lay all your faith, can be someone’s bedtime story that was elaborated on time and time again until it evolved into what we have come to know. Oh, shit I said evolve and I forgot that as a catholic, you have no understanding of the meaning of evolution. So let me break that down for you….it means that it changes over time. (hope that helped)
And before you send me back a reply, chastising me, stating how I know nothing about your religion and how you’ve already forgave me since Catholics are so forgiving, let me inform you that I come from a devout Catholic family. One who teaches Caticism and who goes to the Vatican for family vacations, so I don’t need your forgiveness. I forgive you for your close-mindedness on thinking that you being Catholic gives you the right to think that it is the only one religion. If you truly believe in god and are not some seriously deranged fanatic (as you sound to be) you would know, that God (should there be one) just wants you to believe, believe in SOMETHING. Be it the Catholic god or Shiva or Buddha or that nirvana is the state of a cow. Just BELIVE IN SOME HIGHER POWER. And just because your believes differ than that of your neighbor, you don’t tell them that they are wrong and scold them. YOU ACCEPT THAT NOT EVERYONE HAS TO BELIEVE WHAT YOU DO and not everyone needs you to forgive them nor save them.
Additionally, if you had gone about your reply with some sort of tact and had not of had such an accusatory tone, I wouldn’t have felt the need to write this post telling you to FUCK OFF. It is people like you that make me ashamed to be Catholic. For it is people like you (and the child molesting priests that you might be for all I know)that make people believe that all Catholics think that their shit don’t stink & that they are so high and mighty. When in all actuality, we are probably one of the most fucked up religions of all.
Now go back to doing all your hail marys and I’ll forgive you for being so narrow minded that you couldn’t even let one man have an opinion on something without opening your trap. you’d be much happier if you stopped researching Valentine’s Day in July and just had an impure thought every once in a while.
go ahead….it feels good.
There is no god. Get over it. Fucking sheeple. You think this entire universe was just created for a bunch of apes who accidentally evolved? God was created when homonids became sentient. And used drugs like cannabis, peyote, (psychedelic mu)shrooms.
“Do you believe in god?”
“No.”
BANG “Dead.”
“Do you believe in god?”
“Yes.”
“… Do you believe in *my* god?”
“No.”
BANG “Dead! My god has a bigger dick than your god!”
RIP George Carlin
thank you :)
anyone who quotes carlin is okay in my book
Thank you for responding on actual Valentines Day and not in the middle of July.
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