My wife and I, and several of our closest friends, have an Anti St. Valentine’s party every year. We spend the day laughing at each other’s jokes and turn it into more of an April Fools Day, saying the worst things we can think of and end each joke with face-saving gasps. Along towards the evening, we’ll be so energized by all the silliness at this party, we’ll go for a run or go ice skating, and come back to the pad, open some bottles of champagne, and play Irish music!! We’re sure that’s why we’ve lasted so long. 
Here’s my favorite anti St. Valentine’s Day message for this year. The web is full of them. Post a favorite link or message.
The day of St. Valentine has become associated with bunches of flowers, boxes of chocolates, romantic dinners and, even, love. A bastion of popular culture, yes.
But before the next swoon, the next meeting of lips this Valentine’s Day, spare a thought for the mysterious nuances of history and the bizarre tangents of contemporary culture.
To begin with, who was Mar (Saint) Valentine? The day is, after all, named after him. The question is an easy and obvious one, the answer not so.
The early martyrologies of the Christian Church refer to at least three different Saint Valentines (or Valentinus), all of whom allegedly met their celestial maker after great suffering at the hands of their fellow man at some stage in history on a day of Feb. 14. Two are relevant to contemporary tradition.
One is thought to have been a priest at Rome, the other a bishop of Interamna (modern Terni, central Italy north of Rome) both in the second half of the 3rd century AD, before the Roman Emperor Constantine I issued, in 313 AD, the Edict of Milan which established toleration for all religions, including Christianity.
The stories are set during the reign of Emperor Claudius II (268-270 AD), the simplest being that the unfortunate Valentine, not necessarily the priest or bishop, was martyred for refusing to renounce his Christian faith.
Valentine the priest or bishop is said to have defied an imperial edict banning marriage. This story has it that Claudius II, then fighting many wars against the Germanic tribes threatening the empire, needed more, or better, soldiers and that single men rose to the occasion above their married counterparts. An adjunct to this version also has him aiding persecuted Christians.
Valentine continued to perform marriages and for this he was imprisoned and condemned to death. While jailed, his guard’s daughter is rumored to have visited him frequently and, on the day of his execution on Feb. 14, 269 AD or 270 AD, left his female friend a letter signed “from your Valentine.”
What is undoubtedly more interesting for some of us is the way these Christianized stories are linked with pagan Roman religious rites.
In ancient Rome, according to some sources, Feb. 14 was a holiday to honor Juno, the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Hera. Juno, after whom the month of June is named, was both the sister and the wife of Jupiter, the head of the Roman pantheon. She was the patron of marriage and the protector of women, concerned especially with sex and reproduction. She represented, in a sense, the female principle of life.
Testifying to evolving roles and concepts, Juno was worshiped in different guises. As Juno Lucina, goddess of childbirth, she had a temple on Rome’s Esquiline hill from the 4th century BC.
As Juno Moneta (she who warns) she guarded over the finances of the empire and had a temple on the Capitoline hill close to where the Roman mint would later be located (“mint” and “money” are derived from this persona of Juno).
In later religion she migrated from being the savior of women to the savior of the state and was worshiped, in conjunction with Jupiter and Minerva (identified with the Greek Athena, goddess of wisdom, war and crafts), at the temple on the Capitol, where the Senate met.
Juno’s historical origins are associated with the Middle Eastern fertility goddess Astarte, the Greek name for the Ashtoreth of the Bible and the chief deity of Tyre and Sidon. She was, in fact, the main goddess of ancient Canaan, and she was the Ishtar of the Assyrians and Babylonians.
More reliable historical sources, however, put the feast of Juno the Matronalia as celebrated annually on March 1. The festival is reported to have consisted of a procession of married women to the temple of Juno to make offerings to the goddess. At home, offerings were supplemented by prayers for marital bliss. Wives received gifts from their husbands and gave a feast for their female slaves.
Leading up to the Matronalia on March 1 or, alternatively, after the feast of Juno on Feb. 14, was the fertility feast of Lupercalia that celebrated Lupercus the god of agriculture and shepherds and Faunus (the Greek Pan), and the arrival of spring. The Matronalia and Lupercalia appear to have been connected with each other as rites of spring, fertility and femininity.
Lupercalia began on Feb. 15; goats and dogs were sacrificed and, smeared with their blood and wearing only a loincloth or fragments of goatskin in imitation of Faunus, youths would run around the seven hills of Rome. They would symbolically lash with an instrument of purification a februa, from which the month of February is derived in this case a length of fresh goat leather, everyone they passed, especially women.
Perhaps a romantic projection of the modern Valentine’s Day upon history, some accounts state that on the eve of the Lupercalia the names of Roman girls were written on paper and placed in jars, to be drawn by Roman youths. Thus would the paired-off young men and women become partners for the festival. Orgiastic rites are suspected to have developed over time during the Lupercalia.
Pope Gelasius (papacy 492-496 AD) finally suppressed the 1,000-year-old Lupercalia after a long struggle with its advocates. With its abolition, the pagan rite is reported in some sources to have been replaced with a festival celebrating the purification and fertility of the Virgin Mary.
According to other sources, Gelasius, in 496 AD, is accredited with nominating the eve of the Lupercalia, that is, Feb. 14, to honor St. Valentine. It was common early Church practice to substitute Christian events for pagan ones so there would be a certain cultural continuity at the popular level.
But, it appears the ancient feast is not yet forgotten. In the city of Edmonton, Canada, the fifth annual Lupercalia “a weekend of fetish fun with a taste of ancient Rome” will this year be held Feb. 20-22. There is little that is reminiscent of St. Valentine in the event’s publicity blurb:
“The marketplace is buzzing. Throngs of citizens and slaves mill about in the square. Vendors hawking their wares. The din is deafening. This is Rome, 79 BC. This is the feast of Lupercalia. All are waiting for the festival to begin … to be blessed by the Priest of Lupercal … and then … perhaps to find true love, or at least a play partner for the night ahead.
“Fast forward to Lupercalia 2004. Torches blazing, Caesar presiding, the military on the prowl for runaway slaves and unruly citizens, slaves for the auction penned off to the side of the square, under the discipline of the overseer. Togas, tunics, everyone is in their very best Roman finery.
“In every corner of the square, you will find different stations, demonstrations of flogging, knives, needles, whips and electric toys … watch, learn and marvel! Adventurous master-slave couples can join in the scavenger hunt … rich prizes to be won! A lavish banquet will be served; slaves will pamper and tend to your every need. And finally, the priest of the Lupercal will bless and make fecund, all who desire it.”
Unprecedented demand for tickets to the event ensured an early sell-out.
And then there are other tributes to the bizarre, such as is found in the 1974 Italian film by director Sergio Grieco, The Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine.
Returning to the mainstream and the origins of today’s St. Valentine’s Day, during the Middle Ages it was believed that around mid-February, the birds partnered. Later, in the Parliament of Foules, by the medieval English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (1343?-1400), we read: “For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day/Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.”
For this reason the day of Saint Valentine was viewed as consecrated to lovers and as an occasion for love letters and sending lovers’ tokens. Both the English and French literatures of the 14th and 15th centuries allude to the practice. Those who chose each other under these circumstances appear to have called each other their Valentines.
The apocryphal nature of many of these accounts, however, ensures mystery continues shrouding the persona of Saint Valentine and the development of the Valentine’s Day tradition as we know it. But whatever the truth, gradually, Feb. 14 became the date for exchanging love messages and Saint Valentine became the patron saint of lovers. Commercial valentines were introduced in the 19th century and now the date is supremely commercialized.
So this Valentine’s Day when you act locally by giving flowers and chocolates, think globally and remember that there is, actually, much more to the occasion than the trite commerciality of the present day.
Remember too that the roots of the occasion lie in paganism. So, if you cannot afford a ticket to Edmonton, why not draw some inspiration from the Lupercalia and put those flowers and chocolates to some imaginative use. Enjoy.