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To: Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup <heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>, Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup 2 <heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
Subject: Origin of Valentines day
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1999 18:33:54 -0800
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From: Jonna Grohall
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject: Valentines day

Does anyone have any information on Valentines day???? Including the
origins and any associated material.

Thanks Jonna

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From: Eddie Chumney
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject: Origin of Valentine's day

St. Valentines Day: 5th Century Rome

"...The Catholic Churchs attempt to paper over a
popular pagan fertility rite with the clubbing death
and decapitation of one of its own martyrs is the
origin of this lovers holiday.

As early as the fourth century B.C., the Romans
engaged in an annual young mans rite of passage to the
god Lupercus. The names of teenage women were placed
in a box and drawn at random by adolescent men; thus,
a man was assigned a woman companion, for their mutual
entertainment and pleasure (often sexual), for the
duration of a year, after which another lottery was
staged. Determined to put an end to this
eight-hundred-year-old practice, the early church
fathers sought a "lovers saint to replace the deity
Lupercus. They found a likely candidate in Valentine,
a bishop who had been martyred some two hundred years
earlier.

In Rome in A.D. 270, Valentine had enraged the mad
emperor the mad emperor Claudius II, who had issued an
edict forbidding marriage. Claudius felt that married
men made poor soldiers, because they were loath to
leave their families for battle. The empire needed
soldiers, so Claudius, never one to fear unpopularity,
abolished marriage.

Valentine, bishop of Interamna, invited young lovers
to come to him in secret, where he joined them in the
sacrament of matrimony. Claudius learned of this
"friend of lovers," and had the bishop brought to the
palace. The emperor, impressed with the young priests
dignity and conviction, attempted to convert him to
the Roman gods, to save him from otherwise certain
execution. Valentine refused to renounce Christianity
and imprudently attempted to convert the emperor. On
February 24, 270, Valentine was clubbed, stoned, then
beheaded.

History also claims that while Valentine was in prison
awaiting execution, he fell in love with the blind
daughter of the jailer, Asterius. Through his
unswerving faith, he miraculously restored her sight.
He signed a farewell message to her "From Your
Valentine," a phrase that would live long after its
author died.

From the Churchs standpoint, Valentine seemed to be
the ideal candidate to usurp the popularity of
Lupercus. So in A.D. 496, a stern Pope Gelasius
outlawed the mid-February Lupercian festival. But he
was clever enough to retain the lottery, aware of
Romans love for games of chance. Now into the box that
had once held the names of available and willing
single women were placed the names of saints. Both men
and women extracted slips of paper, and in the ensuing
year they were expected to emulate the life of the
saint whose name they had drawn. Admittedly, it was a
different game, with different incentives; to expect a
woman and draw a saint must have disappointed many a
Roman male. The spiritual overseer of the entire
affair was its patron saint, Valentine. With
reluctance, and the passage of time, more and more
Romans relinquished their pagan festival and replaced
it with the Churchs holy day.

Quouted from "Panatis Extraordinary Origins of
Everyday things, Charles Panati, Harper & Row
Publishers,New York, NY 1987 pp 50-52

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From: Eddie Chumney
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject: Origin of Valentine's day

The holiday of Valentine's Day probably derives it's origins from the
ancient Roman feast of
Lupercalia. In the early days of Rome, fierce wolves roamed
the woods nearby. The Romans called upon one of their gods,
Lupercus, to keep the wolves away. A festival held in honor
of Lupercus was celebrated February 15th. The festival was
celebrated as a spring festival. Their calender was
different at that time, with February falling in early
springtime.

One of the customs of the young people was
name-drawing. On the eve of the festival of
Lupercalia the names of Roman girls were written on slips
of paper and placed into jars. Each young man drew a slip.
The girl whose name was chosen was to be his sweetheart for
the year.

Legend has it that the holiday became Valentine's Day
after a priest named Valentine. Valentine
was a priest in Rome at the time Christianity was a new
religion. The Emperor at that time, Claudius II, ordered
the Roman soldiers NOT to marry or become engaged. Claudius
believed that as married men, his soldiers would want to
stay home with their families rather than fight his wars.
Valentine defied the Emperor's decree and secretly married
the young couples. He was eventually arrested, imprisioned,
and put to death

Valentine was beheaded on February 14th, the eve of
the Roman holiday Lupercalia. After his
death, Valentine was named a saint. As Rome became more
Christian, the priests moved the spring holiday from the
15th of February to the 14th - Valentine's Day. Now the
holiday honored Saint Valentine instead of Lupercus.

http://www.rom101.com/valentinesday.htm

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