You Can't Stop It

I'm thinky and procrastinatory today, so you get to read now my desperate attempt to stall as long as possible before having to call someone over something that should have already been taken care of by someone other than me.

Someone (You remain unnamed intentionally. If you want credit, claim it in the comments.) just posted this on Facebook:

Valentine's day is stupid and does not exist . . . It's called "St. Valenstine's day" [sic] and is about blood and death. Where did our culture decide to make it a day of mushy-crap?

A few things here:

1. Please tell me "Valenstine" is a typo.
2. When was it ever about blood and death?
3. Why is "mushy-crap" hyphenated?
4. The 18th Century. It was decided then. So sayeth Wikipedia. (All hail.)
5. Which horse is more important: the one that leaves the gate first or the one that finishes first?

Very little is actually known about the person(s) after whom Valentine's Day is named. In fact, the Catholic church removed Saint Valentine's Day from the list of official feasts, because all they knew about him was where and when he was buried. Not even when he died.

With that in mind, Valentine's Day has had several different associations over the centuries. One of the first associations it has was with the start of spring. In fact, in some cultures St. Valentine has been considered a patron saint of spring. (We'll just ignore all those years that it's snowed on February 14th.) In the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a poem that talked about birds finding their mate on St. Valentine's Day. That's still clearly an association with spring, but is considered by many to be the first association of the day with romantic love. From there, things started to spiral toward where they are now.

In the 15th century, love letters started becoming more an more common around February 14th, and there may have been an annually convened Court of Love in France that may also have been a hallucination brought on by plague. True story.

The aforementioned "mushy-crap" likely didn't fully arise until the 18th century when a publisher printed a book of verses for guys who couldn't come up with their own. Thanks to some other historicalistic things, romance and eroticism became more prominent around the same time. All that fed back into Valentine's day and by the start of the 19th century Valentines were being put together in factories.

So there you have it. Spring started around February 14th (in the pre-Gregorian calendar), birds mate in spring, thinking about mating makes people want to mate, people try to find people with whom to mate, Valentine's day. Boom.

I'm really not sure where my well-meaning friend got the idea that Valentine's Day was associated with blood and death. I mean, yes. The legends do claim that St. Valentine was martyred, but if that's the only thing he was remembered for, he'd never have such a major holiday. Heck, there's practically a feast every day of the year for someone who was martyred. It's an almost disconcertingly common trait among saints.

Now, it is entirely within the realm of possibilities that there was once a great conqueror name Valenstine. He could have slaughtered millions of people and ordered their families to dance in the blood of the fallen on February 14th. Then, somewhere around 1893, the world's governments could have united to change the day from being a solemn remembrance of the atrocities committed by Valenstine to a celebration of love in the name of the much less terrifying Valentine. They then could have relegated every use of the name Valenstine to nothing more than a typo and paid off every person on Earth to never mention Valenstine again and celebrate Valentine's day instead. If that's true, this blog will most likely get me killed. If that happens, writing pointless rants for you to read over the last few years has been a privilege and an honor. Valenstine was a monster! Never forget and never forgive!

Let's suppose for a moment that either of these two theories on the origin of Valentine's Day is true. Or, for that matter, whatever origin you want to believe about Valentine's Day. Suppose that it has somehow changed from its original purpose.

There's nothing you can do about it. Nothing. If there were, no one would ever have to spend thousands of dollars on an engagement ring. Seriously. Watch this: Why Engagement Rings Are a Scam.

But sadly, as the video says at the end, you can't get away with getting engaged without a ring, because the idea has become too deeply wedged into our culture. You can't get away with pretending Valentine's Day isn't about love, because now it is! It doesn't matter which horse gets out of the gate first. The only thing that matters is which horse crossed the finish line first.

Knowing where Valentine's day comes from doesn't change what it is now. It is about "mushy-crap" now. Accept it.

Or don't.

Either way, you're just going to annoy someone.

And speaking of annoying, didn't you like that video ruining everything you ever believed about engagement rings? Here are some more you might like:

• Purebred Dogs Aren't Better
• Tipping Is A Bad Thing
• Einstein Didn't Fail Math (And Other Misconceptions)
• America Isn't As Great As You Think

And the best part about all of these? Thanks to society, there's virtually NOTHING you can do about any of it! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

But here's something you can do something about!

Seriously. We can all agree on this.

(I promise this wasn't a propaganda piece when I started writing it.)