Commentary: Valentines Day Special! Why the Roman Empire was so great.

I was sitting at my desk at work, finishing off my Animal Crossing writeup this morning when I got beaned in the head by a small sack of Hershey Kisses. I initially jumped up to locate the culprit, but then decided to just sit back down and be content to eat them instead. It wasn’t until I had already eaten half of them that I noticed the little heart-shaped note taped on the back, reading “Happy Valentines Day!” Holy crap! I had completely forgotten! Here I am writing about Animal Crossing and missing out on the perfect opportunity for some holiday satire! Well, Animal Crossing will have to take the back burner and wait until Monday. There are bigger fish to fry today. Valentine’s Day. What a stupid idea. A holiday where couples can shower each other with gifts ostentatiously to make anyone around them that remains unattached feel sorely aware of their absence of a significant other more so than the other 364 days of the year. It’s not like couples need a special day for this. They do this every other day anyway. So why does this holiday even exist? Well, today, it’s what we call a “Hallmark Holiday”, just one more day for manufacturers and retail outlets to capitalize on by convincing us we need to spend all our money on things we don’t actually need. But let’s instead look at the origin of Valentines Day. The holiday is named after a Catholic Priest who lived in 3rd century Rome. The Emperor at the time, Claudius II, decided that single men make better soldiers than those with wives and children to worry about, and so decreed that young men were not allowed to marry. Valentine however continued to perform marriage ceremonies, and was eventually discovered and imprisoned. Then he and the jailer’s daughter supposedly fell in love, and he wrote her a love letter signed “From your Valentine” shortly before his beheading on February 14. He was then later declared a saint and February 14th a holiday. Embittered individuals could stop there and say that this holiday should then instead be about the beheading of lovers than a celebration of love, but I’m not finished yet. This holiday conveniently replaced another ancient Roman holiday, traditionally celebrated on February 15th, known as the Feast of the Lupercal. On the eve of this holiday in honor of the Roman god of fertility there was a tradition of drawing names, where the young men would draw the name of a young woman from a jar, and the two would become a couple for the following year. Ah, now I see that I’ve perked up the ears of all those despondent souls out there. And here is exactly what I propose. Let’s take this holiday back to it’s Roman origins. It would work out better for everyone. Rather than this holiday of exclusion, we could instead turn this day to the benefit of all. Everyone would have a significant other by the end of the day, Hallmark could still make cards to be used in the lottery drawing, and most other retailers would benefit as well, as now everyone would have a date to buy gifts for and no one would be sitting at home wallowing in pity instead of buying stuff they don’t need. It’s a scenario where everybody wins. Let’s return the Feast of Lupercal! Everybody write your congressman, let’s see if we can make it official.