| Before you rush out and buy candy and a card for your Valentine on February 14, read on – when you discover the origins of this day, you may choose to abandon cute and cuddly for hot and steamy.
Before being appropriated by Christian saints (there are three St. Valentines, and little is known about any of them, making this day as confusing as most Christian holidays), Valentine’s Day was a heathen good time.
Februarius, meaning purgation and purification, sets a naughty little stage for the adventures that follow. For the Romans, this time of year meant renewal – and, clearly, spring cleaning and fertility went hand in hand in preparation for the new year, which, at that time, began in March. Get out your maid uniforms, folks. Dust off your dildos and put the flannel jammies in the laundry.
The Romans rejoiced in the kinkiest of holidays: Lupercalia (celebrated February 15). This holiday’s main purpose was to pair people for the rest of the year – it involved priests sacrificing virgins, and young boys whipping each other and bystanders with a Februa, a leather whip made of goatskin. Happy New Year, indeed.
Then there’s Chaucer. He wrote the first Valentine’s poem. His birds stay up all night – making sweet melodies (ahem). Indeed, the Parliament of Fowls (not surprisingly pronounced "fools" in Middle English) is about mating – abundantly. This is the time of year when birds and all animals are up all night, and since their rompings are keeping us up anyway, Chaucer suggests we do the same.
Make no mistake, Valentine’s Day is not a time to celebrate monogamous committed relationships by staying in and eating chocolate. It is about seeing love in all of its forms, and satisfying bodies that have been cooped up all winter. Chaucer encourages lovers to make love all night to drive away winter’s darkness. The medieval approach was not only healthy, but logical.
Little changed in this celebration of carnal lust for Shakespeare, whose birds were still avidly fornicating, undoubtedly as a kind of treatise to us. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a character spots two naked lovers mid-bliss in the forest and notes that they are too late – St. Valentine’s is past. This should tell us all we need to know about Valentine’s Day and England’s forests during the Renaissance. Brrr.
Leave it to the Victorians to royally repress all the good stuff. It should come as no surprise that the first valentine cards started to circulate during the Victorian era. They were lace, of course. However, as with all Victorian repressions, we can assume that for all the lace they showcased up front, there was a seething leather reality behind it.
At least in Denmark there was still an element of naughtiness to the cards – they would be passed to lovers unsigned and the object of the game was to guess which people (yes, always plural) wanted to bed you. Out with the old, in with the new.
It is unclear how Cupid, everyone’s favourite little cherub, became associated with Valentine’s Day. But more interesting is that Cupid is the Roman name for the Greek god Eros. Eros is not cute in the Greek conception – he is awe-inspiring. Hesiod describes him as the "loveliest of all the immortals, who makes... men's bodies go limp, mastering their minds and subduing their wills." There is nothing cute about that form of seduction. And yet... hubba hubba.
So give history a run for its money. Forget the chocolates and the mass-produced teddy bears. Forget cute. Buy your lover(s) satin sheets, or a blanket for the beach, and get on with it. Make Saint Valentine jealous. Eros would have wanted it that way. |
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