Before Hallmark and Russell Stover convinced us all that February 14th would be a great day to hand out sweet sentiments on colorful paper and gorge on chocolate truffles, this holiday had a much darker tone.
Arnie Seipel, a writer for National Public Radio, reported this morning that though the origins of Valentine’s Day are a bit fuzzy, historians have reason to believe this lovey-dovey holiday dates back to Ancient Rome.
Never mind candy and flowers, Roman men knew how to woo a lady.
“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.”
According to Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the Roman men were drunk and naked. “ ‘Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them, Lenski says. They believed this would make them fertile.’ ”
Not far off from the scene at a modern nightclub, the festival of Lupercalia also included a type of “matchmaking lottery”.
“…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.”
Don’t get me wrong; I can appreciate a good night of involuntary promiscuity and beatings with bloody animal hides just as much as the next girl, but something about the harmlessness of candy hearts that read “Tweet Me” has me loving the modern gentleness of this so-called Hallmark holiday.
Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/13/133693152/the-dark-origins-of-valentines-day
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