A Day to Forget

The 14th of February... the 45th day in the Gregorian Calendar; the day Henry Pelham became British Prime Minister; the day Oregon was admitted as the 33rd US state; the day Alexander Graham Bell applied for a patent for the telephone; the day of the first performance of Oscar Wilde's play "The Importance of Being Ernest"; the day that the League of Women Voters was founded in Chicago, Illinois; the day that IBM corporation was founded; the day Jeremy Levin (CNN reporter) was freed from Lebanon; the day British figure skating couple Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean skate off with a gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo; and (my favourite) the day that Dolly the Sheep (the first cloned mammal) died.

However, you mention the date February the 14th and what do people think of? Valentine's Day. A day named after one of potentially three different saints. Not even the Catholic Church is 100% sure about which saint Valentine or Valentinus is THE Saint Valentine, so how on earth can anyone be 100% sure that February 14th is the day to celebrate at all! And what are we celebrating in the first place?

For eight hundred years prior to the establishment of Valentine's Day, the Romans had practiced a pagan celebration in mid-February commemorating young men's rite of passage to the god Lupercus. The celebration featured a lottery in which young men would draw the names of teenage girls from a box. The lucky girl assigned to each young man in that manner would be his sexual companion during the remaining year. Imagine if they continued to do this in the Israeli army! Hmmm actually with all the 18 year old beauties that come over for their year outs in Israel I guess we kinda do ;)

One legend I heard, which I like above the others, is set during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, as women are obviously too much of a distraction for a Roman man, the emperor ruled that no young men were allowed to marry, thus increasing the number of potential soldiers for his army. A priest called Valentine decided that this ruling was an injustice and continued to marry young lovers, resulting in Claudius ordering his death.

And in this priest's memory the world sends red roses to their loved ones; buy Valentines Day cards, consume chocolates and champagne all in the name of the martyred priest! What a crock of shit!

I beg of you people, put away your cash. If you love someone, then everyday is Valentines Day. You should never waste a day or wait for a day to tell the person that you love that you love them. You do not need to be told what day to celebrate the love you share, for your love is a personal matter. Now if you are, on the other hand a sad individual who uses the day named valentines day as an excuse to stop being such a woos and tell the one you have been obsessing about that you like them, I have one thing to say… Stop being such a pussy and just do it!

The day February 14th will always be Dolly the Sheep memorial day for me!

(this is an actual picture taken of her grave)

Dolly the (cloned) Sheep

1996 – 2003

RIP