With this seemingly ridiculous holiday around the corner, i decided to find out what there is to it besides buying your partner or lover flowers and candy. Don’t get me wrong; Who doesn’t love getting flowers?

Wow, no wonder i never knew the history of St. Valentines Day, because it seems that almost no one knows the true history of it! According to Wikipedia, in ancient Rome there was a holiday called Lupercalia which came at the end of a 3 day fertility festival called Juno Februa, in which the names of young women were put into a vessel and drawn by young men, and whoever drew her name, she got to have sex with for the rest of the festival. Apparently, on Lupercalia,

“many of the noble youths and magistrates run up and down through the city naked for sport and laughter, striking those they meet with shaggy thongs.” - Plutarch

And apparently, it was quite an honor to get smacked with a naked boy’s “shaggy thong,” as all the women would go to the street and hold out their hands to be struck, hoping to become pregnant or have good luck with their childbirth.

Well, Pope Gelasius didn’t like all this sex play, so he abolished the festival and decided that the feast of Saint Valentine would take its place. Valentine apparently was known for secretly performing marriages despite the fact that Emperor Caudius II had banned all marriages in Rome because married men made bad soldiers. He was jailed and legend says that he fell in love with the jailer’s daughter during his incarceration. The legend says that before he was put to death, he passed a love note to her that was signed, “From your Valentine.” (Do we teach our children these lies?)
Everything after that is kind of a blur, except that in the 80’s the diamond industry began trying to turn it into a holiday for giving diamonds. Big surprise.
At any rate, i think we should do away with our current Valentines day traditions and go back to running through the streets naked, spanking people with shaggy thongs. Doesn’t that sound like much more fun? Come on, who’s with me? Hey, wait, we already have something very similar to this in San Francisco. It’s called the Folsom Street Fair, a leather and fetish fair that takes place on the last Sunday of September. It’s just as well, though. February is a little too cold here to be running around naked smacking people with our shaggy thongs, don’t you think?

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