Heart Attack

I really hate to see the godless secular mainstream liberals take over a religious holiday like Valentine's Day and turn it into some kind of celebration of lust and filthy, filthy sex. After all, like Christmas, St. Valentine's Day is a holiday steeped in rich, Christian traditions... many of which predate Christ!!!

Um, okay. Maybe not. I was confused because the day is named after Saint Valentine, who was obviously a churchgoer of some kind. If I remember correctly, there were a bunch of snakes in Ireland who ate all the potatoes and were about to start on the beer when St. Valentine joined forces with the leprechauns to send them to hell. Or maybe that was St. Patrick. Fuck, I don't know!

Okay, I just checked on Wikipedia and I found out that St. Valentine was likely one of three martyrs who may or may not have helped Roman soldiers get married (but not to each other).

I also learned that St. Valentine's Day first became associated with romantic love sometime in the 14th century in England and France. They chose February 14th, because that's traditionally the day that birds pair off to mate.

Ewww!

But even prior to that, mid February has always been associated with love and fertility. In ancient Greece, the date coincided with the end of the month of Gamelion, during which the marriage of Zeus and Hera was honored by everyone except for Zeus, who apparently spent his every waking moment assuming animal forms and impregnating hapless young virgins. Plus, I think Hera was actually his sister or something.

Goddamn Greeks.

And in ancient Rome, February 15 was Lupercalia. This was the festival of the fertility god Lupercus, who was traditionally half-naked and dressed in goat skins. His priests would sacrifice goats and drink wine. Then they'd run through the streets of Rome holding bits of goat over their heads and touching them to everyone that came near them. Apparently getting touched by goat pieces was supposed to make you fertile, so young women would run up and take a severed goat udder to the forehead so they could...

God, that's disgusting! I hate you, Rome! And I'm glad your empire crumbled!

So it turns out that this holiday doesn't have much of anything to do with Jesus. We cut out paper hearts and eat boxes of Whitman Samplers in honor of horny birds, pervy Greeks, and those sick fucking Romans.

Oh, and the Catholic Church removed St. Valentine's Day as an official holiday from its calendar back in 1969. I'm not sure why, but I can only hope it had something to do with all those goat bits littering the streets of Vatican City.

Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day.