Oh, Valentine’s Day.
The hype.
The roses, chocolate, the cards, the fluff, the lingerie, the hearts, the love.
February 14 is the 45th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 320 days remain until the end of the year (321 in leap years).
In 2023, the Moon is Waning Crescent, 41% illuminated, passing through the constellation of Saggitarius.
As you might have guessed, we won’t be going into much detail about the history of this beloved, commercial holiday.
Instead, here are some other interesting things (light and dark) that happened on this day in history and we are offering a discount for all products in the shop, valid until the end of February. Read on to the end of this article!
Spice up your conversations about February the 14th!
| 2018 – A shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida is one of the deadliest school massacres with 17 fatalities and 15 injuries. 2005: A group of college students —Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim — registered YouTube, a Web site for sharing videos; it would become hugely popular, with more than one billion unique users visiting the site every month. 1991: The psychological thriller The Silence of the Lambs was released in American theatres; widely regarded as a classic, it won five Academy Awards, including best picture, actor (Anthony Hopkins), actress (Jodie Foster), and director (Jonathan Demme). 1990 – The Voyager 1 spacecraft takes a photograph of planet Earth that later becomes famous as the Pale Blue Dot. 1989: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa and offered a bounty for the assassination of author Salman Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses (1988) Khomeini denounced as blasphemous. 1946: The first general-purpose high-speed electronic digital computer, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), was demonstrated to the public by its creators, J. Presper Eckert, Jr., and John W. Mauchly. 1929: Members of Al Capone’s gang of bootleggers massacred a rival gang run by George Moran in Chicago during the Prohibition era. 1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company changes its name to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). 1920 – The League of Women Voters is founded in Chicago. 1912 – Arizona is admitted as the 48th and the last contiguous U.S. state. 1876: Alexander Graham Bell applied for a patent for the telephone. |
Ok, ok, here’s something about Valentine’s Day:
Around the year 270 AD, The Roman King Claudius believed that Roman men were unwilling to join the army because of their strong attachment to their wives and families, so he banned all marriages and engagements in Rome.
Valentine, a local priest, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret.
When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.
Valentine was arrested and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off. The sentence was carried out on February 14, on or about the year 270.
Legend also has it that while in jail, St. Valentine left a farewell note for the jailer’s daughter, who had become his friend, and signed it “From Your Valentine.”
For his great service, Valentine was named a saint after his death.
In 496 A.D., Pope Gelasius decided to put an end to the Feast of Lupercalia, and he declared that February 14 be celebrated as St. Valentine’s Day.
Gradually, February 14 became a date for exchanging love messages, poems and simple gifts such as flowers.
In truth, the exact origins and identity of St. Valentine are unclear. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under the date of 14 February.” One was a priest in Rome, the second one was a bishop of Interamna (now Terni, Italy) and the third St. Valentine was a martyr in the Roman province of Africa.
Lupercalia
Lupercalia was an ancient pagan festival held each year in Rome on February 15.
Although Valentine’s Day shares its name with a martyred Christian saint, some historians believe the holiday is actually an offshoot of Lupercalia.
Unlike Valentine’s Day, however, Lupercalia was a bloody, violent and sexually charged celebration awash with animal sacrifice, random matchmaking and coupling in the hopes of warding off evil spirits and infertility.
Lupercalia rituals took place in a few places:
Lupercal cave, on Palatine Hill and within the Roman open-air, public meeting place called the Comitium. The festival began at Lupercal cave with the sacrifice of one or more male goats—a representation of sexuality—and a dog.
The sacrifices were performed by Luperci, a group of Roman priests. Afterwards, the foreheads of two naked Luperci were smeared with the animals’ blood using the bloody, sacrificial knife. The blood was then removed with a piece of milk-soaked wool as the Luperci laughed.
Read more about this ancient, bloody ritualic feast here (history.com) and here ( wikipedia.com)
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