Valentine.. A Day of Open sexuality

Valentine’s Day is a very popular holiday that has made its way around the entire world. People all over the world celebrate this day as the supposed “day of love”. In the Gambia, most people know it as the Day of Love; where you show your boyfriend, girlfriend, concubine, mistress, wife or husband how much you love and cherish them. But I bet most people in our society today have the slightest idea of the history behind this Red Day. What most people don’t know is, if we really should practice Val’s day as it was done at inception, half of the world female population would get pregnant, STDs and STIs within a day.

Where is Valentine’s Day from?

Val’s day has its origin in the ancient Pagan Roman holiday known as Lupercalia. Celebrated on February 15, Lupercalia (known as the “festival of sexual license”) was held by the ancient Romans in honour of Lupercus, Roman god of fertility. It is said to have been one of the oldest Roman Pagan festivals, when pagans would celebrate the “Feast of the Wolf”, also known as the Feast of Lupercalius in honour of their gods Februata Juno and Pan.

To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. They would then strip the goat’s hide/skin into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets and whipped young women with these goat hides. Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because it was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big jar, from which boys/ the city’s bachelors would randomly choose a name and discover their sexual partner for the day, the year, or sometimes the rest of their lives.

So it was based upon this cupid concept. The Greek word is Eros or Erotica, which is basically sexuality. And so that was the main deal on this occasion. And this is where you get cupid from and hearts because this was actually the ceremony of open sexuality. Now, if you’ve watched the movie Spatacus, you’ll agree with me that ancient Romans were sexually hyped people with little or no limitations in that aspect.

So How Did It Become Christianized?

What happened is they combine this with a christian priest called Valentine. Valentine was protecting young people in the 3^rd century of the Roman era as the Roman emperor then had said no to marriages, because he wanted young men to fight strong in battles. Hence they were not allowed to marry. Valentine was a religious priest who disagreed with this and thus was put in jail. Eventually they executed him on February 14^th A.D. 270. So, Lupercalia survived the initial rise of Christianity but was outlawed—as it was deemed “un-Christian”–at the end of the 5th century, when Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day.

While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of priest Valentine’s death, others claim that pagans that later became Christians may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. So they took the concept of the open sexuality, put a name of a Christian priest on it so it seems like a Holy day, but actually it is the open sexuality of the Lupercalia. As the years went on, the holiday grew sweeter as Chaucer and Shakespeare even romanticized it in their works. Eventually, the tradition made its way to the New World by 19^th Century and in this 21^st Century, it has been commercialized and it is huge business!

Some people see Valentine’s Day as a degradation of moral values in our societies, through which the evil of nudity and disrespect of cultures are spread. Because to them, there’s a lot of damages that actually come along with this day, especially for the women, such as unwanted pregnancies, sexuality transmitted diseases, rape etc. On the other hand, others believe it is a day to rekindle old love, bring back love to one’s relationship or simply show love and affection to those that you love.

The question therefore is:

What do you think of Valentine’s Day? Must LOVE be designated a specific day in a year or should it be expressed regularly?