Recently many people have commented to me that Valentine's Day is just a Hallmark holiday and I am here today to refute this idea. First of all lets go back and look at the history of Valentine's Day. You can go to the site and read it but basically Emperor Claudius II of Rome decided single men fight better so he outlawed marriage for his young soldiers. St. Valentine disagreed with this and continued to perform marriages. For his actions St. Valentine was sentenced to death. Of course whether this story is true is questionable, but it is certainly one of the tales of the origin of the holiday. The holiday was officially declared for February 14 around 498 A.D. by Pope Gelasius, there are several reasons for its placement in February that can be seen at the link above. The oldest Valentine still in existence was written by Charles, Duke of Orleans in 1415, it is still is in the British Library in London, England. Valentines were first sent in America in the early 1700's and today over one billion cards are sent each year. Now for a history of Hallmark. Hallmark was started by Joyce Hall and his brothers sometime around 1908. Now how could a holiday which started over 1400 years before Hallmark was even created be considered a Hallmark holiday. Of course you can argue that it isn't that they made it up, but that they exploit it and we only celebrate it because they sell the cards. I think we celebrate most of our holidays because of the excellent marketing skills of the huge corporations of the USA. Isn't St. Patricks day the same way, except instead of the card companies causing the huge to do it is the bars instead? So to all of you who don't like to celebrate Valentine's Day, you should definitely refrain from going out and drinking on Monday March 17. I mean would you normally go out and drink on a Monday night? It brings up a larger question of why do we have holidays in the first place, is it because we need extra days off. Do people really think about the pilgrims who got together with some Native Americans almost 400 years ago on Thanksgiving? Are we really celebrating the birth of Christ on Christmas or have we just fallen prey to the marketing whores? Could somebody please define what holidays I am supposed honor and which holidays are to be dismissed?
Honestly it doesn't really make a difference to me, but I figured lets see if we can get some discussion going. My theory is why should I love somebody anymore in the middle of February then I would the rest of the year. My friend oscar also has a theory about Valentine's Day, he says, "Valentine's Day is like a tax on gettin some." So what does everybody think about today?
For all you VDay haters, I saw some footage on the news today from India of some people tearing apart a card store. They were doing it in protest of Valentine's day and it was a riot(literally). Apparently they didn't have Valentines so sad. Check out the story.
Well have a great weekend and if you are pro VDay have fun if not well I guess just have a regular Friday night.
Instead of including all of the lyrics I will just provide a link to the full song for today, Be Mine
Lyrics for Be Mine by David Gray.
Listen to Be Mine by David Gray
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