The Dark Origin Of Valentines Day

this is a repost , 

the dark history of valentines day 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Podcast. Hello guys, and welcome back to Bizarre Podcast. Now,
as you know, Valentine's Day is just around the corner,
and the past few nights have been brainstorming on what
to buy my wife for Valentine's Day. She's not an
easy person to buy for, believe me. And we've been

(00:26):
going out now for twenty years, we've been married for ten.
It's getting order to buy for her, especially when she
doesn't tell me what she wants. So the other night
I was brainstorming. I was trying to think what can
I get her for Valentine's Day? And then I started
thinking where did Valentine's Day come from? Where did it
all begin? And believe it or not, it's actually got
quite a dark origin story for something associated with love

(00:48):
and romance, and I thought, you know what, this will
be a perfect episode for the podcast. And so that
is the topic of today's episode, the dark origin of
Valentine's Day. So, without further ado, I suppose we'd better
get started, because, in all honesty, I gave up looking
for a Valentine's Day present and I'm going to have
to get back to that pretty soon because it's sneaking
upon us quite fast. Valentine's Day is a celebration of

(01:18):
love and romance that is celebrated all around the world
in most countries. But the romantic holiday was not always
as we experienced it today. It has a dark history
involving pagan rituals and beatings and even decapitation and soul.
Lets delve a little deeper into the dark origin stories
of Valentine's Day and how it has begun to be
celebrated today. It is actually difficult to pinpoint the origin

(01:43):
of Valentine's Day to one particular time in history. However,
when doing my research, it would seem that the possibility
that it originated in Rome is a big one. In
ancient Rome, from the thirteenth of February to the fifteenth
of February, the ancient Romans celebrated a very early version
of Valentine's Day called Lupercalia or otherwise known as the

(02:03):
Feast of Lupecalia. Now, the Feast of Lubrecalia was like
a pagan ritual, but it exactly didn't entail well. Let
me tell you. The Romans did not exchange loving Valentine's
Day cards or gift each other chocolates. No, at the
feast of luprecalia, the men and women would gather and drink.
They would drink a lot and get naked. The men

(02:24):
would sacrifice a goat and a dog, and when this
grizzly deed was done, the women would then line up
and the men would actually hit the women with the
hides of the slaughtered goats and dog. Now, after hearing that,
you're probably asking yourself why, I mean, what was the
point of this ritual? And to tell you the truth,
it was consensual. The women actually wanted to be hit

(02:45):
with the hides of the animals. The reason behind this
was that they believed that it would make them fertile.
And so as soon as this part of the strange
ritual was over, the women would write the names down
and put the pieces of paper into a big lottery
and then the men would pick the women's names out
of a hat, so to say. And then the man

(03:05):
and the woman would be coupled up and they would
spend the rest of the ritual very drunk and very naked,
getting to know each other a little better, if you
know what I mean. Well, after hearing that, you're probably thinking,
what has that got to do with our Valentine's Day,
the Valentine's Day that we celebrate today, And don't worry,
it will all make sense by the end of the episode.

(03:28):
So as we go on around the year two hundred
and sixty nine a d. On February the fourteenth, a
priest in ancient Rome was beheaded by the emperor Claudius
the Second. Here's why. So Claudius was trying his best
to build draw a strong army. The problem was, it
seemed not a lot of men wanted to join this army.
So Claudius came up with a conclusion that men didn't

(03:50):
want to join because they were so devoted to the families,
to the wife and children. And let me just say
at this point, Claudius the Second's nickname has gone down
in history as Claudius the Cruel, And you're going to
see why. Now. Because of this belief that men wanted
to stay with the wife and child and not join
the army, Claudius decided to ban all marriages and engagements

(04:12):
in Rome. And that's exactly what he did. Now you
can probably see why you got the nickname Claudius the Cruel,
because from what I've read about him, he wasn't a
very nice man. Now, unfortunately this didn't sit well with
a certain priest. This priest was called Valentine, and Priest
Valentine was not happy about this at all. He didn't
think it was right to ban marriages, so he just

(04:35):
wed young lovers in secret. And that's exactly what he did.
If a young couple wanted to get married, they were
going and see Saint Valentine and he would wed them
in a secret location. Now it's also said that during
the service Valentine would cut out heart shapes from parchment
and give it to the young couple that he had
just wed as a symbol of love. And this maybe
were we get the symbol of the love heart in

(04:57):
our Valentine's Day cards. And it is also said he
wore an amethyst ring with a picture of Cupan on it, which,
as you know, he has become like a little bit
of a mascot for Valentine's Day, so that might also
be connected. So, as we said, Prince Valentine was performing
these marriages in secret for quite some time until unfortunately
he got caught by Claudius the Second and Priest Valentine

(05:19):
was sentenced to death and momentarily sent to prison. Now,
it is said that in his time in prison he
befriended the jailer's daughter who was blind, and he actually
cured her by praying to God by using some kind
of miracle, and he cured her blindness. And it is
said that after that the jailer's daughter and Valentine became

(05:39):
quite good friends. And on the day of his execution,
it is said that he wrote a letter or a
card to her before he went off to be executed,
and at the end of the letter he signed it
from your Valentine, And as you know, we still use
this sentence in today's Valentine's Day cards. And then Valentine
was executed by being clubbed to death and be headed.

(06:02):
So yeah, it's not a very romantic story to associate
with Valentine's Day, but this is an important one to
remember because as time went on, Valentine was remembered fondly
for what he had done in the name of love,
and eventually it was named a Saint Saint Valentine, and
in a d four nine six on February the fourteenth,

(06:23):
Valentine's Day was established in honor of Saint Valentine. However,
it is believed that it was only established by Pope
Gelesius to take the place of the pagan holiday Luprecalia.
You remember the ritual of sacrificing goats and dogs, and
I said it would all make sense later. This is
where it starts making sense, because it didn't quite fit

(06:44):
in with new Christian beliefs, and they really wanted a
new kind of holiday to celebrate, not one worth. They
slaughter animals and whip women with the hides of those animals,
and so from that day on the fourteenth of February
was remembered for the great day that Saint Valentine had done,
instead of the pagan ritual, which in my book is

(07:05):
to step open. I'm sure you'll agree. It wasn't until
the fourteenth century that Valentine's Day became associated with romance.
And this was all down to a poet called Jeffrey Chaucer,
and the poem in question was called The Parliament of Fowls.
This poem is about a group of birds that gather

(07:27):
together on the fourteenth of February to choose their mates
for the year. Now, more and more authors started including
the fourteenth of February into the writing, such as William Shakespeare,
who mentions Valentine's Day in Hamlet. But it wasn't until
the eighteenth century that Valentine's Day was finally seen as
an occasion, and cards and such were slowly introduced into

(07:48):
the public. By the nineteenth century, Valentine's Day cars were
so popular that were being produced in factories. It wasn't
until the invention of postage stamps in the eighteen forties
that the sale of Valentine's Day cards really took off
due to the reduction of the postal rates. This also
made it possible to send a Valentine's Day card in secret,

(08:09):
and then finally, in eighteen sixty eight, the British chocolate
company Cadbury's created fancy boxes to hold their chocolates in.
These boxes were in the shape of love hearts, and
this quickly became associated, as you know, with Valentine's Day
right up until today, where we will literally spend millions
every year on buying chocolates and jewelry and perfume just

(08:30):
to tell that special someone in our lives that we
love them very much. And I guess at heart we're
all just a bunch of old romantics. Have yourself a great,
great Valentine's Day, and I'll see you next time. You
take care of yourself. Bye bye,