This is Food for Thought, Thoughts If It Were
You, and this is your host, Neogentrics. We finally
finished the whole series on birth control. As
I promised, it took about five episodes to do
so. And I thank you guys for managing to stick
along through that entire event. Well, as you
already know, yesterday was Valentine's Day.
A lot of people were itching and ready to spend
their monies and, you know, do all sorts of grand
things for the people that they love and care
about. I'm all for, you know, treating your honey,
whether he or she or it, whatever have be, whatever
you are. You know, good, but in all honest opinion,
I feel like you should be doing this year round,
not waiting for a specific day. So while everyone's
out there spending their money and blowing their
bank accounts out of proportion just for one
day of the year, I'm staying at home by myself.
It's not like I have a choice in the matter,
but this is my life, right? So before we go any
further, I got to give a disclaimer. This whole
episode, I'm going to be doing three different
things for the next three days. I'm going to
give a disclaimer. If you like these holidays
or said events, skip this episode or any of the
other ones that have a name similar to this one
and, you know, enjoy your holidays, okay? Today
I'm going to cover the dark origins of Valentine's
Day. It's not as great or as glorious as everyone
says or thinks it is. You know, yeah, okay, great.
What I'm about to tell you happened in the past,
but if you stop and think about it for a minute,
it's not exactly a good thing. So the disclaimer
here is, before we go any further into this episode,
and I'm going to cut off after this before I
go into it. You know, if you like these holidays
and you don't want to hear what I have to say,
or you just want a reason to throw whatever I'm
saying back at me and say I'm lying, go ahead
and feel free to look it up, but I guarantee
you won't like what you find. So... Now with
that out of the way, I am not liable for anything
that you hear or however it makes you feel. This
is purely educational. So if you don't want to
hear what I have to say, just move on. And with
that, let's begin, shall we? All right, everybody,
let's begin, shall we? The Dark Origins of, well,
as you know it, Valentine's Day. First things
first, Valentine's Day, what is it? Well, it's
a time to celebrate romance and love and kissy
-felt -feelity and happiness and all sorts of
good feelings. At least that's what it's understood
to be. But the Origins of the Fen - this festival
of candy and cupids is actually not as bright
as everyone thinks it is. It's actually pretty
dark. A little bloody and slightly muddled if
you understand what I'm saying here. Though no
one has pinpointed the exact origin of the holiday
or a good place to start which basically hits
the nail on the head like this whole thing started
from this instance. This is what we've managed
to figure out. through history, is that it started
in ancient Rome. You know, where men hit on women
by, well, hitting them. Keep in mind, this is
Rome. So, again, I have no feelings towards anything.
I'm a neutral person. Okay? Between February
13th and the 15th, the Romans celebrated the
feast of Lupercalia. The men sacrificed a goat
and a dog and then whipped women with the hides
of the animals they had just slain. Yeah, that
sounds real grand, doesn't it? The Roman romantics
were drunk. They were naked. According to a couple
of historians from the University of Colorado
at Boulder, a guy named Noel Lenski, okay? This
is from what he was able to decipher. Keep this
in mind, that the information I'm giving you
is... from knowledgeable sources, people who
actually went out and tried to research this,
okay? Let's see. Young women would actually line
up. Oh, here's the thing. Young women would actually
line up to let the men actually hit them, or
at least that's what it looked like from all
of the different pictographs and such. According
to some of the description here, I'm not going
to try to read it in its original Roman. It's
loosely translated as, they believed this would
make them more fertile, for lack there of a better
phrasing. The brutal feat included a matchmaking
lottery in which young men drew the names of
women from a jar. The couple would then be coupled
up for the duration of the festival, or longer
if they were a decent match. The ancient Romans
may also be responsible for the name of our modern
day of love as well as a result of this. And
the reason this is said to be is because of Emperor
Claudius II, who executed two men both with the
name Valentine on the day, well, February 14th,
of different years in the 3rd century. Their
martyrdom was honored by the Catholic Church,
which started... a celebration known as St. Valentine's
Day. Later, Pope Galatius I muddled things in
the 5th century by combining Valentine's Day
with the Lupercalia celebration to expel basically
pagan rituals and tried to make it a holy holiday.
Thus, the title holiday means holy day. But the
festival was more of a theatrical interpretation
of what it had once been. Lenski added that it
was a little more of a drunken revel, but the
Christians put clothes back on it, basically.
It didn't stop it from being a day of fertility
and love. That's basically what it's been. And
around the same time, the Normans celebrated
Galantine's Day. Galantine meant lover of women.
That was likely confused with St. Valentine's
Day, which was around the same point, and since
they sounded a lot alike. Moving forward a few
years, if you will, here. Now that we're back.
As the years went on, the holiday grew sweeter
and sweeter. It started to get better. Well,
let's put it this way. Chaucer and Shakespeare
didn't make it any better. They romanticized
it in their work and allowed it to gain popularity,
especially through Britain and the rest of Europe.
Handmade paper cards became the tokens. How do
I put this? Handmade paper cards began being
the way that they started to do this in the Middle
Ages, and eventually the tradition made its way
to the New World, in a manner of speaking, if
you will. Eventually, the Industrial Revolution
ushered in factory -made cards in the 19th century,
which is where the whole Hallmark cards thing
came to be in 1913. It started back in Kansas
City of Michigan. they started producing mass
valentines, and February had not been the same
since then. I guess you could say the whole card
incident was a result of Shakespeare, in a way.
As of today, now the holiday is nothing more
than a big business, and according to the market
research from IBIS World, Valentine's Day sales
reached, a couple years ago, it reached $17 .6
billion. And they were expected to be a little
bit higher. And over the years, it has been getting
higher and higher. But that commercialization
has basically spoiled the day for a lot of people.
Helen Fisher, a sociologist at Rutgers University,
says that we've only had ourselves to blame.
But in retrospect, it's probably better than
its original origin, considering how it started.
You know, this isn't a command performance, she
says. If people didn't want to buy Hallmark cards,
they would not be bought. and Hallmark would
go out of business, which is totally true. You
know, the celebration of Valentine's goes on
in varied ways, and many will break the bank
buying jewelry, flowers, and such for their beloved
ones. You know, others will celebrate in a, you
know, what's it called, a sad single awareness
day, or sad day, if you will, like dining alone
and binging on self -gifted chocolates and such
simply because they don't have no one to give
to or get from. And even a few will be spending
this day the same way the early Romans did. But
like I said, let's not go there. It's not exactly
ideal. And all things considered, it would cause
nothing more than a giant controversy. Okay?
So, the whole thing with the Valentines was this.
Emperor Claudius declared single men were more
proficient soldiers. Marriage for young men was
outlawed. That's basically how this got started.
Valentine defied the law and became the go -to
for lovers to wed in secret. And when Claudius
found out about the forbidden wedding as well,
that's when he sentenced him to death on February
14th. But this isn't, like I said before, this
isn't the only legend of St. Valentine to exist.
There are others. It says he was beheaded for
helping Christians escape from Roman prisons.
In that story, Valentine was said to have fallen
in love with the prison guard's daughter. Before
his execution, he wrote her a letter signed from
your Valentine. And even stranger and bloodier
legends is that of the Lupercalia, which I mentioned
before, which is a Roman festival that's held
on the 15th, which involved the sacrifice of
animals and such. The reason for that was to
ward off evil spirits and infertility. But...
Like I said, at the end of the 5th century, that
whole thing was outlawed as being unchristian
and they stopped doing it. I guess you can say
this holiday was created by the Pope in a way
to try to mask what it used to be years ago and
bring it into a more civilized light. Okay? Now
that's it for this entire situation regarding
it. It's not a long story. And the whole thing
about it is it is pretty dark as to how it even
came to be. And no matter which variation of
the story you try to believe or how you try to
look into it, it always had a dark history in
which it seems the Roman Catholic Church had
something to do with it. But even with them trying
to make it more civilized and a festival, It
turned out that it was actually Shakespeare and
Geoffrey Chaucer who basically made it what it
is today. By simplifying it and making it seem
like it was some glorious event, you know, and
with the development of personal cards given
to said lovers, and then the boom of the industrial
period making it, modernizing it, and using it
to, you know, raise profits, I guess you could
say it's a result of man's greed that brought
this about. and how the original process of what
it originally meant was lost. Nowadays, when
people think of Valentine's Day, they think about
going out of their way to spend their money for
someone that they care about just to prove it.
Going back to what I said before when I started
this episode, you know, to each their own with
that, but personally, I feel like this is just
a waste of time and energy. If you truly care
about someone, you should be doing this year
round. And using only one day out of the year
as an exception is unheard of. Now it's different
if you're always working and you rarely get time
to do this. And say your job lets you off for
one specific day of the year and it just happens
to be that day. Then I understand why you would
want to do it on this day. But the fact still
remains that people don't ever stop to consider
what... What life would be like if you actually
treated each other like that year round. Instead
of just waiting for one day out of the year.
Now if you don't make a lot of money this is
understood. But I'm pretty sure if you care for
each other enough y 'all can work around this.
You know it doesn't have to be something amazing.
You don't have to go to the mall. You don't have
to go and spend money on fancy dinners or even
flowers. You know. Now if. That's what your significant
other wants or, you know, some new vehicle or
something. That's fine. I'm not going to complain.
But, you know, keep in mind that money isn't
as common as it used to be. It's starting to
get scarcer and scarcer as the economy is constantly
dropping. So you want to save as much money as
possible rather than spend. But that's another
topic for another podcast. So again with this,
you know, Enjoy your holiday. I hope you guys
have a great rest of your day. For those who
actually listened to this, if you chose to or
not. And for those who didn't, you know, who,
you know, who'd rather enjoy the day without
knowing its history, that's fine. Again, this
is food for thought. Thoughts if it were you.
This is Neogentrix on the dark origin of Valentine's
Day. If you like what you hear or you want to...
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i hope you enjoy the rest of your day