Valentine’s Day Loses Its Innocence as the Gypsy Layne Cabaret Takes the Stage [Berkshire on Stage]
Story by Larry Murray
Valentine’s Day has suffered many indignities over the years, most recently when the Vatican Council demoted St. Valentine as an official holy day. Then the supermarkets removed all the fragrance from roses. And chocolates are now allowed to be made with hydrogenated fats. And nobody sends real valentines in the mail anymore. It isn’t that Valentine’s Day has been secularized, it’s that it has become an exercise in empty traditions.
While most Christian traditions started out as pagan celebrations, Valentines Day has gone from a remembrance of a Christian saint to one which takes place at the time of February’s Lupercalia (a Roman fertility festival). In ancient times women would place their names in a bowl from which the bachelors would select the person they would spend their next year with. Without having to get married or getting slapped with blood-soaked strips of dead goatskin.
That is one part of the old pagan tradition we’re happy to skip.
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