By FAITH SIMON
Staff Writer
With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching, I want to give some insight on the origins of the holiday. Most people just think it’s just a cutesy holiday that we celebrate, but most people don’t know why. This holiday is assumed to have begun in ancient Rome. This celebration first started when an ancient Emperor slaughtered two men named Valentine on February 14 of different years. The Catholic Church was said to have honored these two Valentines by celebrating February 14. Originally Valentine’s Day was a holiday during the days of the ancient pagan festival called Lupercalia. Lupercalia was a “pagan” day of nakedness, fertility, and love in a really old fashioned sense that lasted from February 13 to February 15. A Pope during the early A.D. years tried to expel paganess from his people so he decided to combine Lupercalia with St. Valentine’s day, but this period of time still held the same meanings no matter what they called it. Another conflicting holiday was Galatin’s Day. This translates to “lover of women” day and could also have been muddled in with these other holidays. Eventually great writers and poets like Shakespeare began romanticizing this day until the point of us celebrating it widespread every year without any real knowledge of where this holiday came from. This holiday that even children celebrate, was once a day of murder and adultery. Funny how things change over time.