Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Cryptid Cocktail Party, a show where we
have a few drinks, share a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown, I am your host Dave,
and today I am joined once again, not once again, again by a friend of the show, Cryptid
Clyde, how you doing bud?
I'm alright, how are you?
I'm fantastic, kinda.
Excellent.
Kinda.
Just kinda?
I ate a bunch of, not a bunch, I ate a few peanut butter and fluff sandwiches before
we recorded, and now my guts are just kinda like real heavy.
I had a PBJ before this too, so right there.
Oh, but yeah, I'm glad you're doing good, you're looking good.
Thank you, thank you.
You know that's what I'm here for.
And you're rocking that mustache man like no other, like the PI up here, yeah.
I'm just glad I can grow a mustache.
Facial hair in general, I know a lot of people who can't and it bums me out.
There's that awkward phase.
I just went for it in high school and just over one summer, just like I'm getting this
out, no patchiness, we're getting this full blown.
You just kinda wield it into existence kinda like?
Exactly.
That's what people need, they need to secrete more stuff to the universe and it'll happen.
Exactly.
You gotta manifest your facial hair, yeah exactly.
Oh shit.
Well Clyde, I think I have a good episode today.
I'm excited.
It is, it's not a cryptid and it's not folklore and it's not like an urban legend, something
a little different, but since it's February I think it's something we should do.
Now Clyde, do you consider yourself a romantic?
Oh of course.
Yeah, like a hopeless romantic or are you just all about it?
The hopeless part absolutely, that's accurate.
No, but it's February, we got Valentine's Day coming up this week, so I figured what
we would do, cause I don't know anything about Valentine's Day or its origins or where it
came from, so I figured today we would explore the origins and the old timey traditions of
the original Valentine's Day.
Oooh, okay.
Because when I looked into it, it's kinda fucked up and it's not as romantic or commercialized
as it is today.
It's fucking wild.
Alright, it might be a little bit shorter of an episode, but I think the content's there,
it doesn't matter, I think we're gonna get through it just fine.
That's right, it's about the meat of it, yeah yeah yeah.
Yeah, and you know, podcasts should only be as long as the subject matter needs it to
be.
Exactly.
So I guess with that out of the way, we'll stop killing time and just get right into
it.
Alright yeah, dive right into this.
Alright, so Valentine's Day, the day for love, romance, and the possibility of your partner
letting you do that one thing you like in bed, you know the one, you know the one, everyone
knows the one.
Oh yeah, once a year.
But what if I told you Clyde, that like most other holidays we have, the Valentine's Day
wasn't always centered around Hallmark cards, chocolates, and the promise of some light
butt stuff in bed, but actually comes from a pagan tradition that was steeped in lust,
fertility, and animal sacrifice.
As long as there was butt stuff involved, that's on board for me.
A hundred percent there was.
But also I assume you wouldn't be, no one would be surprised by me saying that.
It started out as a fucking pretty cool pagan ritual, and then we kind of just ruined it
over time.
Cause that's how Hallmark them are.
Yeah, yeah, they come to the party and ruin it for everybody man.
So like I said, today we're going to go over just one of the possible origins for Valentine's
Day.
Alright.
How it started, how it may have gotten its name, and if time allows we'll try to figure
out just how it became, you know, the commercialized chocolate filled holiday that we've come
to know.
Spoiler alert, it was the Christians, the Catholics.
What?
When has that ever happened in history?
Alright.
So like I said, there's a metric shit ton of different stories and theories for when
and where Valentine's Day originated.
That's even including the name itself.
I read over a few of the different ones and they're kind of cool and all, but there was
one that was just like the most intense when it comes to the actual celebration, which
was basically a three day wine filled sexually charged BDSM festival held by none other than,
I'm sure you can guess, the Romans.
Hey!
If there's one thing they do right, it's their orgies man.
Forget democracy, they have a foundation of this, you know.
Oh God, wine, sex, it's, yeah, pretty much, that's just, that's it.
That's all the rules.
Yeah.
That's why everyone loves going to Italy, it's just everything you want.
And pasta.
Yeah, pasta.
Endless breadsticks.
No, the festival that they had originally started was called Lupercalia, I hope I'm
pronouncing that right, Lupercalia and was held from February 13th to the 15th and I
don't know if this is the right word, but it was marketed as a festival to purify the
city of evil spirits and promote health and fertility.
Now the origins of how the festival started is pretty much like anyone's guess at this
point but scholars have traced this celebration to as far back as the 6th century BC and think
that it has something to do with Rome's creation story of Romulus and Remus.
Okay.
Yeah, so for anyone listening who may be unfamiliar, here's like the most basic quick breakdown
that you can give of the creation of Rome.
Oh, it's bizarre.
Yeah, so King Amulius, I think that's how you pronounce his name, ordered his nephews
and future founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, to be thrown in the river, kind of like Shutter
Island style, basically just murder your children in the river kind of thing, because their
mother had apparently broken her vow of celibacy and these kids technically shouldn't have
even been alive.
Luckily, the servant who was supposed to go all Casey Anthony on them took pity and
put them in a basket where they floated down the river.
They were discovered by a wolf who took them in and raised them as her own in a den at
the base of the Palatine Hills where Rome was later founded.
The twins were later adopted by a shepherd.
Once they were old enough, they killed their uncle and returned to the cave, named it Lupercal.
So that's where that's the story of that's pretty much the very quick breakdown of it.
But also this might be where the festival got its name Lupercalia, lupus meaning wolf,
history.
There you go.
So now, Clyde, you're probably asking yourself, well, what did they do with this festival?
Because I'm sure you're curious.
I have a feeling it's going to be more like what didn't they do?
But yeah, let's let's go.
The Romans, you can probably already guess kind of what was going on.
But at the same time, I don't think you can.
Let's get into it, man.
Let's get messy.
So the Romans, like we've been kind of discussing, weren't really known for being tame when it
comes to their parties.
And this one was 100 percent no exception.
It was celebrated in a couple of different spots, the Lupercal cave, obviously, and an
open air meeting place called the Comitium, which was unfortunately also located in Pompeii.
So in the future, RIP Comitium.
And I think later on it was celebrated at the Coliseum.
But I don't know how true that is.
I only saw it mentioned once.
But Caesar makes reference to like someone giving him like a crown.
So I'm assuming it was probably had to be near there.
I really don't know.
But anyways, so to kick things off, it starts at the Lupercal cave with none other than
a good old fashioned animal sacrifice.
The priests or a Luperci, maybe they would kill one or more male goats, which I guess
were representations of sexuality, maybe because they're horny.
I've been waiting to use that button.
But now this is where it becomes a bummer.
They would also sacrifice a dog.
So they'd kill a dog.
But once the sacrifice was completed, they would take the knife and smear the blood of
the animals on the foreheads of two naked priests who then and this part was really
important.
They really had to make sure that you knew this part.
They would clean the blood off with a wool soaked in milk as the naked blood covered
priests laughed hysterically.
So I don't know why that was such an important part of the ritual.
But you know, I mean, it's pretty funny.
So it's not bad to try too hard.
But but once that was completed, the feast would begin.
And since it was Rome, it was a huge feast, just food, wine, everything, obviously, anything
you could think of.
But once the fun once the feast was finished, that's where the fun if that's what you want
to call what happens next begins.
So the priests would cut strips of hide from the newly sacrificed goats into strips called
thongs or februa, februa, february, february.
And they would hand them out to the men.
Everyone then got butt ass naked.
And the men would chase the women down and whipped any one of them that was in striking
distance with the goat hide strips.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, no, this is I get why it's the holiday of love.
After all that, of course, that checks out.
I mean, it sounds pretty brutal, but the young woman of the time kind of welcomed the lashings
because as because being struck by one of these thongs was meant to bring on fertility.
And then once was all once all this was said and done, all the women would put their name
into an urn for the men to draw from, kind of like a like an ancient like an ancient
key party, and if your name was chosen, you were coupled together for the rest of the
festival to quote unquote get to know each other.
And sometimes those couples would have but actually stay together after the festival,
even falling in love and getting married.
Some would just stay together until next year's festival where they would just swap keys again
pretty much and go home.
So I don't know how anyone ever got married back then if this is what they were doing.
I mean, yeah, but honestly, though, this sounds like a great meet cute.
It sounds like a great basis for a romcom.
Honestly, I just I just picture like what if every year you're trying to get rid of your
partner by pulling a new name from the hat and you're just getting the same person every
day?
Oh, damn it.
Cassandra again.
Come on, Maximus for the third year in a row.
God damn.
Where are we at so far?
How are you feeling about what's going on?
It's good.
Honestly, it's interesting to me about the strips thing, because I feel like that's part
of some Krampus stuff too, as well as like with whipping women with like the switches
being a good thing despite being a painful thing.
Interesting that that's the tradition is beating somebody with a stick.
What's kind of weird, though, is that so they would cut this cut the strips of flesh into
like strips like what people with but they're not tanned or leathered.
Like it's just oh, yeah, it's just fresh, loose, wet, juicy.
So everyone's just covered in blood, drunk off their ass, naked as fuck.
And then they would just whip each other with raw goat skin and then presumably just fuck
all night.
Yeah.
I mean, it sounds like Burning Man at some point.
I'm just saying it doesn't sound like the worst time, but it also doesn't sound like
great.
No, no, you know, you got to really you got to really like your community to show up to
that festival every year, you know.
But unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.
Over time and with the rise of Christianity, the festival kind of lost its spark.
No one was naked.
The festival only ended up lasting one day instead of the three.
The women were still whipped, though, but just on their hands and they were fully clothed.
So that's a bummer.
But man, you can kind of see how it's starting to change into what we know it as.
I mean, as far as I know, we don't whip women with raw goat skin today.
But I mean, I don't know.
I don't know all the traditions around the world.
So now, how did it become what we know now?
Well, the ancient Romans inadvertently may have also been responsible, at least in the
naming of it, because one origin story I read was that two at two different points in the
third century, Emperor Claudius executed two Catholic priests.
They were like practicing in secrecy because Catholicism wasn't like super cool at the
time around.
And coincidentally, they were both named Valentine.
And in both instances, the executions took place on February 14th.
And if there's one thing we know about the Catholic and Christian churches that they
love a martyr.
So they may do they.
So they eventually made one of or maybe both of them.
I don't really know or care into saints and dubbed that day St. Valentine's Day.
Now with the spread of Catholicism, so to spread St. Valentine's Day in the fifth century,
Pope Galsius, the first combined St. Valentine's Day with Lupercalia because you can't have
those filthy pagans practicing their own religious holidays and stated above made the whole
thing a bummer.
No one was naked.
There wasn't a drunk fuck fest like it was back in the day.
It was still a day of like fertility and fucking kind of.
But like, was it though?
You know, marital, marital boning.
Yeah.
Now it was around this time, around this time, there was another holiday being practiced,
I guess, by a group of people called the Normans.
I don't know what that is.
I didn't bother looking it up.
I probably really shut up.
I believe they're they're French, like Normandy.
Oh shit.
Yeah, I did not even think of that.
I was going to say like Norway, but that doesn't make any sense.
But they had a holiday called Gallatin's Day.
Gallatin, I guess, means lover of women.
And I don't know.
I don't know exactly what the celebrations were or what took place at during the holiday.
But people think that Gallatin's also got got kind of like absorbed or conflated with
Valentine's Day, mostly for the reason that they just kind of sounded super similar.
That's really the only reason.
But by this point, it still wasn't like the super romantic love filled day that we that
we know now.
And that wouldn't happen for a few years when a couple of a couple of literary hacks named
Shakespeare and Chaucer started romanticizing in their writings.
And that caused it to spread all throughout Britain, which eventually meant that it spread
throughout Europe, because if we know anything about the British, they can't set still.
No, not at all.
People started giving out handmade cards and little gifts to their potential fuck friends.
And then eventually it made its way to the colonies.
And then from there, only a few centuries later in Kansas City, Missouri, Hallmark Cards
opened its doors in 1913 and started mass producing Valentine's Day cards.
It started a marketing campaign that to this day causes everyone to drop at least a paycheck's
worth of money on flowers, jewelry, chocolate and just like shit that will be forgotten
about like as soon as it's gifted to them.
Absolutely.
Wow.
But there you have it.
That is maybe possibly the history of Valentine's Day.
How it started out as a brutal blood soaked fuck fest to you might get a hand job under
the covers from your wife.
You know, if you give her a job on Valentine's Day, it's very funny to just consider it went
from basically pulling names out of a hat to see who you're hooking up with that night
to, you know, kids in school just dropping in little cards and shoe boxes on everyone's
desk.
You know, you see the origins of it.
It feels a little.
Yeah.
But I mean, that's, but that's, you could say that about any, I guess, like Christian
or Catholic holiday now.
Do you know what I mean?
Sure.
I remember I was in a robe this way way before back in the day and they were all awesome.
They were all, everyone's in a robe.
There's animals getting their fucking heads cut off.
And now it's just like, ah, Uncle Jerry's drunk again and saying something terrible
that he shouldn't say.
Yeah.
The holidays used to be real fucking metal and now they're just kind of like everybody's
Facebook feed basically.
Yeah.
We're actually, we're actually recording this on Superbowl Sunday.
Hey.
And then the fucking back in the day, like the, like the Olympics used to be all naked
and there was people fucking, probably animals getting sacrificed then too.
Like it's just now they got helmets and things to stop TBI's like, come on.
Where's the fun in that?
This is the softening of our culture.
You know, this is the soy boy cucks of 2024.
Right.
I want someone to get their head cut off.
I want eye gouging back in sports, man.
Bring it.
I'm waiting.
Fucking.
Yeah.
I mean, Mike Tyson had it right, man.
He was doing it the old way.
Oh shit.
But yeah, no, that's so, it's a little bit shorter of an episode, but I think, I think
that's fine.
Yeah, no, it's such a weird holiday, but it is fun to learn it's dark history, but also
that it actually legitimately was a Hallmark holiday.
Yeah, basically.
It really, it really was.
Like, I guess, like, I guess like during like the industrial revolution, they started mass
producing just like holiday cards.
Like you could eat, but like Hallmark really propagated the whole like Valentine's day.
Oh yeah.
To an extent, it's like when De Beers or whatever like started like false falsely false, false
scarcity of diamonds.
Yeah.
Like it was like that kind of shit.
And they probably worked in cahoots.
There's no way.
Like, hey, listen.
Oh yeah.
I mean, those ad campaigns were like all super guilty to like, oh, you would love your person
if you gave them a diamond, but I guess, I guess you don't care about that much if you're
not spending, you know, two paychecks on a diamond.
Yeah, they really, I guess gaslighting probably isn't the right word, but they definitely
like really made you feel bad about yourself.
Yeah.
They got real into that, that subconscious just, I'm a bad person vibe.
Oh man.
So yeah.
So we don't really have anyone to blame besides ourselves for turning it into what it is.
Now, you know, but that's every holiday now.
The only holiday that isn't unless you're Guinness, like St. Patrick's day isn't really
commercialized.
You know what I mean?
Like, you have that market, but at the same time, they're doing fine all year round.
Yeah.
That's just an extra bonus at the end of the year for them with the paycheck.
You know, St. Patrick's day pays for their Christmas party is pretty much what exactly
Hallmark on the other hand, they're just fucking, yeah, they really found that niche market
and just fucking drove it home.
Cause then fucking Christmas happened and they're like, ah shit.
Oh boy.
Everybody got a piece of Christmas too.
It wasn't just the Hallmark company.
It was everybody's in it now, man.
Maybe this will be the beginning to a new series.
Whenever a new holiday is about to come around, I'll just do like the fucked up origin.
Honestly?
I'm all for that.
That sounds like a great idea.
Well, cause yeah, doesn't St. Patrick's day like he's driving the snakes, AKA the pagans
out of Ireland.
Yeah.
It's got some, some undertones to it that maybe aren't great.
You know, and a lot of erasure of, of Celtic culture and whatnot because of Christianity.
The also great no problematics.
He was murdering the pagans.
Yeah.
That's what it was.
Yeah.
Okay.
The snakes.
Oh shit.
Well, Clyde, we come to the end before we sign off.
Is there anything you want to plug direct to people where to go?
Hey, no, I'm just not really particularly, but I'm on Instagram, cryptic Clyde underscore
in between there, cryptic underscore Clyde.
And then my first, first show of the year is going to be frog man in a little Ohio on
March 2nd.
So hell yeah, man.
I'll see folks out there.
Super, super jealous.
Wish I was gone.
I'll see, I'll see you out there a few times this year.
I'm pretty sure.
Right.
I'll be around.
Maybe not as a vendor, but I'll definitely, I'll be, I'll be making my rounds to some
cryptic festivals this year.
Don't you worry about it.
Well, I'll see you out there.
All right.
So yeah.
So follow Clyde on Instagram, cryptic underscore Clyde.
Do you have a website?
You have a website, don't you?
It just goes to my Etsy shop.
So it's not really a website, but I'm sure there's a link to it on his Instagram.
If you want to follow us on Instagram, it's a at cryptic cocktail.
Follow me on TikTok, a cryptic cocktail party.
I do have a Patreon, it's $5 a month.
That's not, I haven't really done much with it, but I mean, beer's expensive.
So if you want to help me get drunk while talking to guests, that's cool too.
I have a discord now.
It's just cryptic cocktail party.
It's very lonely in there.
There's like 11 people maybe.
And let's just say it's not popping off, but you could change that by going to the link
in our Instagram and hitting the invite link and talking.
Everybody should get in there.
I think everyone should get in there.
If you're not, absolutely.
You're missing the party.
Yeah.
Says more about you than it does about me.
All right.
Well, with that out of the way, Clyde, would you like to say goodbye to everyone?
Sure.
Bye.
Bye everyone.