Valentine Is For Purification

Lupercalia, the Roman festival, which provided a template for the valentine celebrations, depicted February as the month of protection and purification from unproductivitiy.

Lupercalia celebrations that were done on February 15th had been dedicated to god Lupercus for 800 years before AD 392 when all pagan cults were prohibited by an edict of emperor Theodosius.

It was believed that lupercus guarded and watched over the shepherds and their flocks against the wolves who roamed Rome.

During Lupercalia feasts, honour was also directed to Juno Februata, the goddess, the queen of the heaven and the wife of Jupiter (Zeus). In her honour, youths of noble birth ran through the streets with goatskin thongs. Young women would throng the streets hoping to be lashed with the sacred thongs, as it was believed to make them better able to bear children. The goatskin thongs were known as the februa and the lashing was called the februatio, both emanating from a Latin word meaning to purify. Therefore, February is the month of purification.

In this light, world leaders would give humanity the best valentine gifts by purifying their areas of jurisdiction simply by ensuring that, no one dies of treatable diseases, hunger, no one suffers from preventable oppression and that every person gets opportunities to maximise their potentials. This would help make our world a pleasant dome.

Lupercalia was so significant that Mark Anthony, an important Roman, who was master of the Luperci festival saw the year 44 BC as the proper time for offering the crown to Julius Caesar.

Lupercalia was renamed saint valentine's day by priests when emperor Theodosius I banned all pagan feasts in AD 392.

The catholic encyclopaedia names three saint valentines who were martyred on February 14th. One was a priest and physician at Rome, another was a bishop of Terni in Italy and the other lived and died in Africa.

Most scholars believe that saint valentine the priest of Rome and saint valentine the bishop of Terni in Italy were the same person because both were beheaded on February 14th AD 270 by the Roman emperor Claudius 11 Crothicus the cruel.

Claudius was angry when his solders were too few. He banned all weddings in a bid to force young men into military service. However, Saint Valentine wedded secretly those couples who sought his aid. He was consequently jailed and beheaded for flouting that ban on weddings.

In AD 496, pope Gelasius changed the Lupercalia festival of February 15th to Saint Valentine's Day February 14th.

It was popularly believed in Europe that February 14th was the day that birds began to choose their mates and began mating. Therefore during that day, there was a lottery where the names of maidens were placed in a box and drawn out by the young men. Each man accepted the girl whose name he drew as his love for a year or longer.

In a bid to Christianize that pagan celebration, the priests substituted the drawing of saint's names for the names of the girls.

On Saint Valentine's Day, the priest placed saint's names into an urn or box. The young people then drew a name from the container. In the following year, which began in March, the youth was supposed to emulate the life of the saint whose name he had drawn. However, this adaptation was not sustainable because people often reverted to using names of the girls instead of names of saints on valentine day.

Therefore, Saint Valentine day to a politician is a day to seek counsel from the successful political heroes; to students it is time to choose the best academic mentor and to the businesspersons it is a prime moment to harness the unbeatable digital entrepreneurships, to the religious, it is a day to purify one self and to choose a role model of a life of holiness. While to the lousy it is a day of lust and licentiousness.

To the Christian who abhors valentine day on the grounds of its pagan origin, it would be wise to remember that all of us were once pagans.

By Rotich Wilson, P.O.Box 4 Kapsuser, Kenya, 20207

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