by Barry Parham

Created on: February 14, 2010

A Comedy of Eros

(From pagan Rome to pajama-grams in only MM years)

Every year, in mid-February, guys do the dance. All across this great land that used to be ours, millions of American males nearly forget Valentine's Day, freak out, and then stampede the stores for flowers & candy, or power-troll the internet for prurient PJs & overdressed teddy bears.

And all because of three guys named Valentine.

How did this happen? Who are these three guys? And why February?

Somehow, at some point, February got this reputation as a month of romance, maybe because it's cold. Plus, football's gone and we're stuck with the wildly popular sport of bowling, where you almost never get to see any serious violence.

According to my exhaustive research, performed in-between today's Toyota recalls, St. Valentine's Day contains vestiges of both early Christian and ancient Roman traditions, alongside their other time-honored traditions, like hot-dish picnics and mass public executions.

Holiday Factoid:  "vestiges" is the classical Greek plural of "vest."

On this topic, the Catholic Church appears a bit confused, as they admit to recognizing at least three different Saints, all named Valentine:  Valentine, Valentinus, and Val Kilmer (starring Tom Hanks as Forrus Gumpus). All three men were martyred, one of the serious downsides of achieving Sainthoodedness. Coincidence or not, they all died during various Februarys, shortly after forgetting to buy a nice gift.

One legend describes Valentine as a pagan priest who paganized around Rome during the reign of Emperor Claudius II (spelled "too") in the Third Century (spelled "III").

Holiday Factoid:  The Third Century actually went on for several hundred years, until some bright bulb finally invented "IV" (spelled "hospital feeding tube").

But on one particularly slow Ides, Claudius outlawed marriage for young men, based on his theory that single guys would be better soldiers, proving that Claudius had never met me. But Valentine continued to perform marriages in secret, until finally, on the Ides of February, around III-thirty, Claudius decreed that Valentine be - as the ancient Roman Navy Seals would put it - "martyred with extreme prejudice."

Some believe that the Christian church chose to celebrate Valentine's Feast Day in February in an effort to upstage the pagan Lupercalia festival (held on February Ides), a seriously wine-washed fertility fair dedicated to Faunus Corruptus (the Roman secretary of the Department

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