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LAURA ON LIFE
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I recently did some research on the history of Valentine's Day. I wanted to know how a day dedicated to pithy love poems and heart-shaped boxes of candy came to be. What I found out surprised me.
St. Valentine was apparently a priest who lived in the time of Claudius the Cruel. Amazingly, Claudius thought that more young men would join his army if he outlawed marriage. He thought they wouldn't have anything better to do than join his army if they weren't allowed to get married and have kids. The man obviously wasn't thinking with a full pot of noodles. It seems to me that the only thing this would accomplish is a surplus of unwed mothers. Because if marriage wasn't allowed, what's the sense in saving yourself for marriage?
I think, also, that Claudius must not have been a forward-thinking man. Even if his plan worked, and I'm not saying it would have, he forgot that he'd have to replenish his army with a new crop of young men after the present army got themselves killed. Where would they come from if marriage and baby soldier-making came to a standstill? He probably realized his mistake years later and ordered his soldiers to immediately impregnate every women between the ages 13 and 50 but for goodness sakes, don't marry them. Imagine that! Now there's cause for celebrating! It was probably the first Mardi Gras.
Claudius' ignorance notwithstanding, St. Valentine decided to defy Claudius's orders and marry young men to their sweethearts anyway. For this defiance, he was thrown in prison and sentenced to death. How romantic. So far, I'm not getting the whole love-poems-and-candy-thing yet.
But I read on and found that while St. Valentine was in prison he met the jailer's daughter (now we're getting somewhere) and befriended her. I guess, in jail, you can't help but be stuck in the "friend-zone" because, well, there were people watching you. Kind of hard to get your groove on when there are guards with weapons hovering.
Apparently, just before St. Valentine died, he left a farewell message to his "friend" and signed it "From your Valentine." Okaaaay. So this feast day that has gone on for almost two thousand years started when some guy wrote a note and then signed his name. That's it? What else was he going to write? It was his name after all. It wasn't as if it was anything profound. I really need to be careful what I write. It could start a whole new holiday.
I think that the people of Claudius' time simply didn't have anything better to do, because, of course there were no marriages and consequently no baby-making allowed so they decided to have a new feast day. What else are you going to do? It stands to reason that they would not have wanted to create a feast day honoring Claudius, their hard-hearted emperor. But maybe that's how April Fool's Day came about?
Laura Snyder may be reached at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com
Or check her website www.lauraonlife.com for archived columns
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