Ancient Rome is riddled with unique traditions. None can be more strange than the beginnings of St. Valentine's Day. Though it was not named a holiday at the time, once a year, for a teenage male to reach his rights of passage (to the God Lupercus) he had to choose a name from a box. In the box were the names of all the teenage girls in the village. She was his for a year. Not until 800 years later did the church terminate this ceremony. It turned out it was a celebration of a man named Christian Priest named Valentine.
For eight centuries, the practice later known as Valentine's Day was a cruel Roman ritual, actually a lottery of sorts. It all started in the 4th Century B.C.. A post-puberty young man's right to passage was to the God Lupercus. Names of teenage women were drawn from a box by the young men and they were assigned the woman for a year to do with as he pleased, within the restraints of Roman culture which were rather lax at the time. Finally in 4 A.D the early church leaders stopped the cruel practice after an evaluation of how it had been created in the first place.
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The event turned out to be a celebration of a good man, a priest and bishop named Valentine who lived near Rome in the mid to late second century. During this time Emporer Claudius 11 had outlawed marriage as he felt it made his soldiers weak, and he needed the strongest men available. After all, Rome was crumbling.
Secret hidden weddings had been performed by St. Valentine after he noticed the pain and suffering experienced by young lovers wanting to unite. He was soon caught and executed but not before Claudius tried to convert him, to save him from being terminated, to believe in the Roman gods, which Valentine would not change his Christian beliefs.
Valentine's execution date was February 24th, 270.
While Valentine was in prison awaiting his fate, he came in contact with his jailer, Asterius. The jailer had a blind daughter. Asterius requested him to heal his daughter. Through his faith he miraculously restored the sight of Asterius' daughter. Just before his execution, he asked for a pen and paper from his jailer, and signed a farewell message to her "From Your Valentine," a phrase that lived ever after.
Valentine was later named a Patron Saint, and spiritual overseer of an annual festival. The festival involved young Romans offering women they admired, and wished to court, handwritten greetings of affection on February 14. The greeting cards acquired St.Valentine's name.
As Christianity grew, so did the popularity of the Valentine's Day card, and is now Valentine's Day celebrated worldwide. Of course is a nonsectarian holiday celebrated by almost all faiths, and people of none. One of the earliest Valentine's cards was sent in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London. The card is displayed at the British Museum.
I only found out the origins of Valentine's Day today, and found it quite interesting. So what I decided to do was add a "Sex, Love, & Relationship" section to my main gift shop, and mark everything down up to 80% just through Valentine's day, just to make the Patron Saint proud. It can include a gift card and the customer does not have to sign it "From Your Valentine" but can if he/she wishes.
Cartoonist and history buff Rick London has marked down to 80% all his sex, love, and relationship gifts just for Valentines Day. He owns Funny Gift Shops My Funny Valentine Gifts, and http://www.LTSuperstore.com.
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