It's Valentine's Day

Don't you just love the stories behind all these festivals and celebrations? We've all heard of St.Valentine, who performed secret marriages in ancient Rome (or maybe it was Greece or Turkey or one of those places anyway... somehow keep mixing him up with Saint Nicholas). But did you know that the original festival of love was the Lupercalia in Rome?

Now this must have been one interesting celebration. The ancient Romans knew how to have their orgies, so you can't expect them to have been backward when it came to a festival of love, can you? The young men of Rome ran a race (or something like that) clad - from all accounts - in nothing or a miniscule loincloth and the girls got to pick their partners. Kind of a reverse swayamvara, I guess; but at least the girls knew what they were getting….

Somewhere down the ages, the church decided to play spoilsport and turned it into a holy day and Valentine into the patron saint of lovers. And now, with St.Valentine off the official list of saints, it's become another commercial greeting card day. I'm not complaining, believe me, it's nice to get cards and flowers and chocolates from old friends and new. In fact, here’s a Pooh & Piglet valentine I got from one of my oldest friends this morning.

And here's a valentine story that dropped by my mailbox many months ago:
There was a young widowed mother who was being courted by the town judge. Her kids, who quite liked him, decided to stir things up a bit and sent him a valentine supposedly from her. They even found a word which rhymed with valentine - the poor woman!! The next time she met him, he looked through her; no wonder, for the valentine read

"If you will be my valentine

I will be thy concubine!"