Cynics amongst us often proclaim Valentine's Day to be nothing more than a ploy greedy conglomerates dreamt up to flog us all mass produced poor quality chocolate, unoriginal tomes of affection or the generic lab-produced red "rose". However, take a moment to be thankful that corny marketing campaigns are all you're being beaten over the head with.
Those Roman's didn't do things by halves and Valentine's Day is no exception, as explains Discovery News:
Forget roses, chocolates and candlelight dinners. On Valentine's Day, that's rather boring stuff — at least according to ancient Roman standards. Imagine half-naked men running through the streets, whipping young women with bloodied thongs made from freshly cut goat skins. Although it might sound like some sort of perverted sadomasochistic ritual, this is what the Romans did until A.D. 496. Mid-February was Lupercalia (Wolf Festival) time. Celebrated on February 15th at the foot of the Palatine Hill beside the cave where, according to tradition, the she-wolf had suckled Romulus and Remus, the festival was essentially a purification and fertility rite.
Directed by the Luperci, or "brothers of the wolf," the festival began with the sacrifice of two male goats and a dog, their blood smeared on the faces of Luperci initiates and then wiped off with wool dipped in milk. As thongs were cut from the sacrificed goats, the initiates would run around in the streets flagellating women to promote fertility. Finally, in 496, Pope Gelasius I banned the wild feast and declared Feb. 14 as St. Valentine's Day.
But who was St. Valentine? Mystery surrounds the identity of the patron saint of lovers. Indeed, such was the confusion that the Vatican dropped St. Valentine's Day from the Catholic Church calendar of saints in the 1960s. There were at least three men by the name Valentine in the A.D. 200s, and all died horrible deaths.
One was a priest in the Roman Empire who helped persecuted Christians during the reign of Claudius II. As he was imprisoned, he restored the sight of a blind girl, who fell in love with him. He was beheaded on Feb. 14.
Another was the pious bishop of Terni, also tortured and beheaded during Claudius II's reign.
A third Valentine secretly married couples, ignoring Claudius II's ban of marriage. When the priest of love was eventually arrested, legend has it that he fell deeply in love with his jailer's daughter. Before his death by beating and decapitation, he signed a farewell note to her: “From your Valentine.”
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It might be all last minute shopping, frantic gift wrapping and over done turkey these days but have you ever wondered what Christmas was like in the Holy Land in the nineteenth century? Well you're in luck as I am celebrating this blog's first Christmas with a detailed account by Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, a British Field Marshal and colonial administartor who died during the First World War, of 'Christmas at Bethlehem'. This article, together with another, was found among reports and other papers of the late Lord Kitchener, in his handwriting and over his signature after his death. It was published in the January 1917 issue of Palestine Exploration Quarterly.
'On Christmas Eve of 1875 we rode from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to be present at the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church. The road, so well known to all travellers in the Holy Land, passes the Well of the Magi, where tradition relates that the three kings from the East again beheld the guiding star.
"A little farther on is a still more ancient site, the Tomb of Rachel, now an ordinary Mahommedan tomb without any appearance of remote antiquity; yet this spot has been venerated by Christians, Mahommedans, and Jews from the earliest times as the burial-place of the mother of Benjamin. It agrees so well with the Bible narrative of the death and burial of Rachel on the way to Bethlehem, that it seems hard to find objection to the genuineness of its position, and yet there are many difficulties to be reconciled before it can be accepted without any doubts. On our, arrival at Bethlehem we found the inhabitants returning from Beit Jala, where they had been to meet and bring the Latin Patriarch to their town. Any honoured person is thus met in Palestine by the inhabitants before arriving at the town, and conducted the rest of the way with great rejoicings, the mounted portion of the escort performing fantasia in front, galloping wildly about, shouting, and firing their' rusty old flintlocks into the air. On returning from Beit Jala they had started on the Jerusalem road in order to meet the French Consul, who arrives in great state as the representative of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Bethlehemites are well-to-do people, earning a good deal from their speciality of carving religious subjects in mother-of-pearl which they sell to pilgrims and travellers; they are mostly Christians, and their women have a well-deserved reputation for good looks which is enhanced by their rather peculiar costume. It consists of a dress of red and blue woollen stuff, open at the throat, and with long hanging sleeves, a mantle of the same hangs down behind, and a long white veil, sometimes embroidered, and held up by a high cylindrical bonnet, forms their headdress; this resembles the ancient oriental headdress worn by female figures representing Syrian towns seen on coins. The lower part of the bonnet is ornamented sometimes by strings of coins closely packed together, and necklaces of silver coins are worn with full dress. A Bethlehem woman might almost start a money-changer's shop with the amount of coins she wears; some are old family heirlooms, and it is their great ambition to put on as many coins as possible. This desire is fraught with some danger, as several of these women were murdered for their ornaments in the short time we were at Jerusalem. Nothing is prettier than a crowd of these women in their long white veils, bright dresses, and sparkling jewellery. The men delight in very rich and full turbans of all colours, and very bright oriental dresses."
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