Do we have one or need one?
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Feel free to make one.
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I think these are the closest we have at the moment:
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If we end up staying here permanently, thatās going to be one of the big reasons why. Which is weird, because when I lived in the US, I was a big gun guy. But it just isnāt a thing here, and there are essentially no privately-owned handguns here, and we are better for it.
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If we have one, I am unaware.
And I donāt particularly think we āneedā one; but of course anyone is free to post whatever topics they like.
I was just making it (hopefully) crystal clear that I do not want this thread to turn into one; there are already days that I think posting a thread for minor gripes and bitching about annoyances was a mistake on my part, as it already is.
Sorry, whereās āhereā again? Iām sure youāve mentioned it before, but my brain is a sieve sometimesā¦
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I donāt like Valentineās Day. I didnāt like it whenever I was partnered, and I like it even less when Iām not.
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When I was partnered it was miserable. Either Iād try to keep it low-key and my ex would accuse me of not caring anymore, or else Iād try to do something like make a nice dinner and get lectured about how itās a Hallmark holiday and I was being sheeple. The 15th was worse, with everyone at work winking and asking if Iād had a good Valentineās.
Now that Iām single, I make myself a nice but unfussy dinner, watch a not-stupid romance movie (High Fidelity this year), and just chill out. I used to make chocolate fondue, but that seems like too much fuss on a weeknight.
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This is, I think, the first V-Day where I havenāt been obsessed with my relationship status.
Admittedly, I have something else to be stressed over at the moment, but even so, the fact that Iām single has barely intruded on my thoughts today, and certainly not more than any other day. Itās odd, but in a good way.
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I canāt be grumpy about Valentineās Day with a big fluffy cat on my tummy 
though kitty makes it a little more difficult to type
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More like āFestivals in honour of We-know-nothing-about-this-guy-except-that-he-was-martyred.ā
But, then, the Roman Catholic calendar is full of such festivals, so it seems that itās only because of Chaucer that this particular historical obscurity gets more attention than his peers.
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Comments like that affect me the same way.
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That, and as with a lot of nominally Catholic/Christian festivals, itās probably a replacement for an older pagan festival:
Besides, in many places in the Northern Hemisphere at least, chocolate is a good way to beat the late-winter blahs.
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There are various accounts of St. Valentinus, in some of which he himself was a soldier who became a priest and in others of which he was simply a priest, but one who may have converted Roman soldiers and persuaded them to marry against the decrees of Claudius (the third century AD one, not the I CLAVDIVS one).
The story may have been improved to make it fit the Valentine theme (i.e. people getting married) and he may simply have been executed, along with some of his covnerts, for preaching to the Army, which was forbidden.
Information on the Internet, I now find, seems to recycle the same sources.
Pope Gelasius (5th century CE) looked for a suitable Roman martyr to be the placeholder for Lupercalia, a very NSFW festival involving animal sacrifice, flagellation, and randomised sex with strangers. He needed a saint martyred on or around 13-15 Feb., and Valentine got the job.
Chaucer did not originate the idea of courtly love. That happened in the centre of European civilisation - Provence, Northern Italy - that was largely wiped out by the Catholic Church. Anglocentricity tends to conceal from us that until we got very militarily successful, Britain was rather a cultural backwater occupied by Norman thugs. We then became a major European state run by Norman thugs. However, I digress.
You get an idea of what the Provencal upper classes were like from a few famous lines in Dante - the courtly circumlocution with which Arnaut addresses Dante:
āTan māabellis vostre cortes deman, quā ieu no me puesc ni voill a vos cobrire. Ieu sui Arnautā
āYour courteous request so much pleases me that I neither wish nor am able to conceal from you that I am Arnautā.
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I never meant to imply such: merely that the association between courtly love and St. Valentine is not recorded to exist before Chaucer mentions it.
Yes, Pope Gelasius ended the celebration of Lupercalia, and yes, the same Pope added St. Valentine to the calendar of saints. However, I canāt find anything reliable that states that the one was in replacement of the other. Lupercalia seems to have been more a celebration of the Romulus/Remus myth.
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I dunno. āEasterā was pretty transparent.
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Bedeās claim is the only evidence that it was named after a pagan goddess.
But Easter is the celebration of Iesus rising from the dead. And thereās a strong association between rising, dawn, and east.
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While I understand those feels, I personally adore the 15th of February; all the Godiva Vday candy is half-price.
Damn those Canterbury Tales!
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@Voynaimor
@nimelennar
@gadgetgirl
@Lucy_Gothro
No offense to all the history buffs, but you guys are starting to derail a tad.
Someone please make a new post if we want to continue discussing the pagan/historical origins of now-commercial holidays.
Thanks.
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Bruges, Belgium.
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