Folklore & origins of Valentine's Day

Excerpted from the Wilson's Almanac Valentine's Day page

This year for Valentine's Day, why not dump the sentimental cards and the dozen red roses, and do something really traditional, something that harks back to the origins of this ancient commemoration?

If you want to get right into the ancient spirit of Valentine's Day, try these party tricks. First, go with your friends to a local cave and sacrifice some goats and a dog. Find two young men of good breeding and smear their foreheads with your bloody knife, then wipe the blood off with wool soaked in milk. The youths must laugh during this.

Next, your whole party should run licentiously around town wearing the skins of said goats, and infertile townsfolk will come out on the streets to be belted by you with straps of goat-skin. This will help them have children.

At some appropriate juncture of your evening, arrange to have the names of all the females written on billets, put in a container and drawn out one at a time by the males. This will enable the sexes to pair off as lovers.



Yes, the modern practice of celebrating Valentine's Day most likely has its roots in the ancient Roman celebration of the Lupercalia, when all these weird customs were indulged. The ceremonies started in the cave where it was said Romulus and Remus, the legendary twin founders of Rome, were suckled by a she-wolf. Scholars are uncertain, but it could be from the Latin word for wolf, lupus, that the festival got its name. It could even be there is a connection with the terms wolf whistle and wolf (a rakish man), as has been suggested ...

Categories: calendar-customs, ancient-rome, folklore, saint