Martyrology: A Love Story

Valentine's Day. What's it all about? Love? Togetherness? Companionship? How do you demonstrate the depths of your undying love to that special someone?

I haven't the foggiest idea; I've come to terms with the fact that I'm a misanthropic ogre who will die alone, never knowing the joys of true love. It's for the best, really. After all, the last thing this world needs is for me to breed.

No, I'd much rather spend my days and nights in a windowless dungeon, incessantly slamming my head against a keyboard until something vaguely resembling the english language coalesces on my computer screen. It makes me feel productive, and the winters are incredibly mild.

This whole "blogging" thing allows me to pretend that I'm actually interacting with people without actually having to, you know, interact with them.

As for Valentine's Day, from what I've seen in our popular culture, it seems to be a holiday devoted entirely to men giving various things to women (hopefully) in exchange for sexual favors. But isn't that basically what men are always doing? Straight men, obviously. Gay men don't give a good goddamn about getting into a woman's panties.

Panties. Gosh, that's a strange word. Why is it plural? It's just one article of clothing. Shouldn't it be "panty"? That's a fun word to say. Panty. Say it out loud a few times to yourself. You'll enjoy it. Panty.

Ahh... good times.

Back to my point, I think most people would say that Valentine's Day is all about romance. But what's "romance" but another way of saying "I want to get into your panty"? After you've gotten into that panty once, you want to keep getting into it, so you buy the panty chocolates, expensive jewelry, gorgeous floral arrangements, and maybe a power drill, depending on the panty's particular tastes.

That's fine, really. Nothing's free in Waterworld. Not even romance.

My experiences with Valentine's Day are not terribly exciting. Before I gave up on the human race, I used to engage in a fairly benign Valentine's Day ritual in grade school. Every student in class would bring a shoebox to school decorated with various holiday trappings (hearts and glitter), as well as a collection of store-bought valentines to distribute to students of the opposite gender.

Not a select few students. Oh no. Boys would bring valentines for every girl, and vice versa. There was no favoritism. Sure, if a girl liked a certain boy a little more than the others, she might add an "xoxo" to the valentine, but that was it. The whole scene lasted maybe twenty minutes, then we all moved on to our spelling test. We got on with our lives, such as they were.

But then puberty strikes like a thief in the night, and the male brain is left consumed with thoughts of sex, and the innocent little cards festooned with images of adorable cartoon characters aren't enough, anymore. Romance enters the fray. That's when things got weird.

I remember a girl in my high school journalism class asking me if I would buy her a chocolate rose for Valentine's Day. I had never actually spoken to this girl before, and found the whole situation awkward. Why the hell did she want me, a perfect fucking stranger reading Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame in the middle of class, to buy her a chocolate fucking rose?

As it turns out, she was in something of a competition with her friends to see who could convince the most boys to buy them chocolate roses for Valentine's Day. The chocolate roses were conveniently available for purchase in the cafeteria that very day. I did not provide her with an affirmative answer, only a glum "maybe".

During our lunch period, I waited until I saw the girl from class enter the cafeteria with her giggling friends, then I ambled up to the chocolate rose kiosk and purchased one of their finest confectionary flowers. The girl saw this and whispered something to her friends. They all giggled. She was going to win that bet!

Two days later, the big day arrived. The girl walked into journalism class to see me sitting in my customary seat in the back of the class, happily eating the chocolate rose I had previously purchased. She approached me and confusedly asked "is that for me?", and I merely shook my head and continued to enjoy my candy. She wandered off in a daze, utterly confounded by what she had just witnessed.

That was a lot of fun. I'm sure in the grand scheme of things this incident mattered very little to her. But for one brief moment, I had fucked with this girl's entire worldview. It made me smile. Maybe that's why I'm going to die alone. Eh.

What day is it, anyway? Valentine's Day? Who gives a shit about Valentine's Day?! Oh right, people in love, I suppose. What is Valentine's Day, really? We all understand what it is now, but how did it get that way? Who decided that February 14th should be a day dedicated to all that mushy stuff that makes angry little boys punch each other in front of the arcade?

What we call "Valentine's Day" is actually St. Valentine's Day, and it is traditionally dedicated to the remembrance of a Roman martyr. What martyr? Take your pick. Martyrologies (I'm so glad that's a real thing) give you three choices. First, we have a Roman priest in the 3rd Century AD who was executed for secretly marrying Christians, which was strictly against the law. This is the most widely known example of "St. Valentinus".

There are two others, a 2nd Century bishop in Terni and a man murdered in Africa around the same time, but hardly any facts remain regarding those two characters.

Understand regarding the "official" St. Valentine that the story you've been told has hardly any evidence to back it up. This story is derived from The Nuremberg Chronicle, an historical text and Biblical paraphrase published in the 15th Century. Definition of Biblical paraphrase: the rendering of the Bible into a work that retells all or part of the text in a manner that accords with a particular set of theological or political doctrines. That alone makes the validity of the Chronicle somewhat suspect.

The exploits of St. Valentine are expanded upon in the hagiography known as the Legenda Aurea, but you have to take any ancient hagiographical work with a huge grain of salt. Either way, nobody was celebrating the Feast of St. Valentine with flowers, chocolate and sexy lingerie. It was a purely religious observance. So where does the romance come in?

"What about Lupercalia?" I hear you ask.  Wow. Congratulations for knowing what the fuck "Lupercalia" is. For those of you staring blankly at your monitor, let me explain.

Lupercalia was a Roman festival held traditionally between the 13th and 15th of February to banish unclean spirits and promote fertility among the masses. It was held in honor of the shepherd god Lupercus and of Lupa, the she-wolf that raised the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus. The brothers of the wolf would sacrifice two goats and a dog, dress themselves in the bloody skins of the sacrificed animals to imitate their god, and run around striking onlookers with crude bludgeons crafted from the flesh of the same corpses.

Sweatin' To The Pagans

People actually lined up for this. They waited all year for it. This was like Roman Burning Man, except the music was better.

Some clueless 18th Century scholar named Alban Butler wrote a book stating that men and women involved in the Lupercalia festivities would draw names from a jar to form temporary unions, and that obviously this was where the practice of exchanging valentines originated. But this custom never occurred during Lupercalia. Butler just threw that in there to forge a connection where none existed.
So there's really no connection between Lupercalia and our modern Valentine's Day, aside from the date.

"But what about Juno Februa?" I hear you ask. First, you really need to stop blurting out questions. This isn't a Q&A, it's a blog. My blog. The first time was cute, but now it's just getting annoying.

Yes, Juno Februa was a generalized festival held around the same time, and the month of February did get its name from the festival. But Juno herself is a huge can of divine worms. Until scholars can decide exactly who Juno was meant to be and what she was supposed to represent, the subject isn't worth getting into. Was she a goddess of love? Fertility? War? Marriage? Fabulous headwear? Good bookkeeping? Your guess is as good as mine.

Maybe she's the goddess of hipsters.

None of this really matters, anyway. Why? Because Valentine's Day as we know it today has nothing to do with martyred priests, confused goddesses, or bugfuck crazy pagan festivals. No, the modern Valentine's Day is the work of one man.

That man? Geoffrey Chaucer.

This guy.

"Who's Geoffrey Chaucer?" I hear you ask. Fuck you, that's who.

People call him the father of English literature. He was also a diplomat, a philosopher, an amatuer astronomer, and he dabbled in alchemy. He was a Renaissance Man before that term existed.

Chaucer also bred ferrets in his stringy hair.

He was the first man to use words like "galaxy", "absent", "obscure", and "funeral" in literature. These words, as well as two thousand others, were commonly used by average people (those who don't read or write), but Chaucer was the first guy to put them on the page. You're familiar with the common usage of regional dialects in writing, right? Hell, Stephen King's oeuvre is lousy with it. Chaucer did it first.

His contributions to the written word (as well as his work with the Court of Chancery) helped legitimize Middle English as a literary alternative to French and Latin. That's right: without Chaucer, we'd all be reading and writing goofy fuckin' Latin.

His masterwork, The Canterbury Tales, is one of the most beloved literary works of all time. The book's influence is neverending. Its unusual (for its time) structure has been lifted by far too many authors to count. Richard Dawkins even wrote a treatise on evolution as an homage to The Canterbury Tales.

What does this have to do with Valentine's Day? Put simply, it's all Chaucer's fault.

He wrote a poem in the 14th Century entitled Parlement Of Foules to celebrate the engagement of England's King Richard II and Anne of Bohemia. The poem concerns a group of birds gathering on St. Valentine's Day to choose their mates. This was an allegory representing an ancient tradition that didn't exist. Chaucer made it all up to honor two young lovers. In time, the themes of this poem became inextricably linked to the Feast of St. Valentine, as well as the traditions we now take for granted.

That prick Alban Butler didn't do his research.

So there it is. Valentine's Day might have taken its name from a martyred saint, but its substance is all Chaucer. So now you know who to thank.

Or curse, depending on whether or not you're able to charm the panty tonight.

"But what about Cupid?" I hear you ask.

What are you, a pedophile?! That's it, I'm not going to take this, anymore. Time to wrap this up with a big, beautiful bow.

Please enjoy this instructional video from noted professors of Panty-Tearin' Rock 'N' Roll, Jack Black and Kyle Gass.



                                          
Happy Geoffrey Chaucer Day, Everybody!