Be Mine - History Of True Love As Well As Valentine's Day

Before there was a Saint Valentine to bring love into the equation, mid-February was an important date for lovers. From 400 years BC, the Romans held an annual contest in the name of their god Lupercus.

The names of teenage women were put in a box and drawn randomly by adolescent men. The 'winners' were legally paired for a year.

Meanwhile, the crazy emperor Claudius banned marriage for young men - he believed that single guys made much better soldiers.

A Christian bishop, Valentine, disagreed with his Emperor and secretly performed marriage ceremonies until Claudius found out and first imprisoned him, had him clubbed, stoned and beheaded on February 24th, 270.

While he was imprisoned, Valentine fell deeply in love with the child of his jailer and when he was taken to be executed, he left her a note signed, 'From your Valentine.'

Taking Valentine's name in vain, the Church, in AD 496, decided to finally get rid of the annual pairing off held in honor of the god Lupercus and so decreed a small change in the guidelines:

Following that, both the young men and the young women would pick a name out of the hat, but instead of getting a year of companionship (and frequently lust), they drew the name of a Saint whose life they had to spend the next year emulating.

Must have been quite a disappointment for the hot- bloodied young Romans!

They named that day after Saint Valentine whose effort, 226 years after his death, was more to usurp the pagan god than to signify love.

Thankfully, public memory was more powerful that political will and Saint Valentine remained connected with lovers. Young Roman men, deprived of their contest, took instead to handing hand-written notes to the women they loved on February 14th.

The tradition of the Valentine greeting card was thus started over 1500 years ago!

The earliest known card that still exists is currently in the British Museum. It was sent by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his spouse. He was a prisoner in the Tower of London at the time and so his feelings of love were probably more acute than most!

Have you located your Valentine yet? If your answer is no, then you probably haven't read the neil strauss the game book.

Don't worry, strauss the game is online and readily available to those of you that need it. As soon as you've properly educated yourself and have found your Valentine, share your story on the neil strauss review page.

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