Well, this is a bit late (as usual), but this time you can
blame my sister. She is apparently
testing me to see how much work she can pile on without it becoming fatal. Little does she know, when she overloads me
with work, I just forego all those other non-essential tasks in my day, like
writing posts, doing my invoicing, eating and sleeping. Ha!
The joke’s on her.
I’m sure everyone realizes that Thursday is Valentine’s Day
(far more important than the birthday of President Lincoln on Tuesday or
Washington next Friday). Yes, it’s
Valentine’s Day, time for naked men to run through the streets whipping women
with lashes cut from freshly killed goats.
What? You don’t celebrate it
Roman style? Come on, flogging your
sweetheart has got to be better, certainly more satisfying, than buying her chocolates
and roses.
Seriously, that was the way Romans celebrated well into the
fifth century. It was a rite of
purification and fertility. Had
something to do with Lupa, the female wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus, the
orphan brothers who founded Rome. I’m
still a little lost how flagellating young women and boys suckling on a wolf’s
teat has anything to fertility; it just doesn’t sound like it could end up with
intimate romance.
But the holiday has evolved into an iconic celebration of
love, sex and sappy greeting cards. You
might wonder just who is at fault for those inane poems that cost five bucks
and end up in the trash three days later.
Well, there is some uncertainty over just who was Saint Valentine. The three leading candidates are all holy men
named Valentine from the second century and all were beheaded, so don’t lose
your head over love. The most cited “Saint”
was a priest who performed secret nuptials for lovers prohibited from
marriage. He was supposedly imprisoned
where he fell in love with the warden’s daughter. On the day of his execution, he wrote her a
letter and signed it, “From your Valentine.”
Most historians, however, credit Bonne d’Armagnac, the
would-be founder of Hallmark, with penning the first true Valentine poem. He was a French nobleman, Duke Charles of
Orleans, and was captured by those fun-loving Brits and tossed into the Tower
of London where he languished for twenty-five years. In his isolation and forced celibacy, he
wrote his wife a long rambling, (and rhyming) love poem and used that word, it started: "Je suis
déjà d'amour tanné. Ma très douce Valentinée." (I am already sick with
love, My very gentle Valentine).
By-the-way, that poetry crap must have worked; she waited for him. Well, she tried to wait for him; she passed
away before Bonne was released and made his way back to France, no word on just
how chaste she remained in his absence.
So don’t forget to buy a poetic card (I found out the hard
way not to use that email kind), and enjoy the flogging whichever end you’re
on.
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