Happy Valentine's Day, St. Valentine!

I think its important to remember that this is a Catholic holiday, so first of all, you are all suckers :)

Second, let's talk about the Saint. I love saints. I think saints are awesome. The sacrament of Confirmation is awesome because you have to pick a saint to emulate, and there's SO much variety to choose from. I chose St. Lioba because we went to St. Boniface Church at the time, and also because she could stop storms with her hands, which is the shit.

Everyone should own a copy of the Lives Of The Saints. It is as important to understanding Christianity as the Bible.

So I'm going to do my duty here and give you heathens a couple "facts" about St. Valentine.

1)There isn't ONE St. Valentine. There's like twenty of them. Which is why this isn't an official Catholic holiday, because they couldn't figure out which one it was supposed to talking about. There's even a Vietnamese one. We also don't know anything about any of them. There's one very brief Roman legend about a guy who had his head cut off, and that's about it.

2)Chaucer invented the whole romantic Valentine's day thing. Remember Chaucer? He was the bawdy son of bitch who wrote that long unreadable thing you tackled sophomore year of high school? He's the reason you feel inadequate today. Which is pretty impressive, since he was the reason you felt inadequate then too.

3)Like all saints, there are various body parts scattered to the four winds at different churches, and people have parades for them. This is another reason why saints are fucking cool.

4)Chocolate makes you fat. And isn't really the same as being in love, no matter how many times Food Network tells you so.

5)Valentine's Day, like every other Catholic holiday we know, was probably created to counteract a Roman festival called Lupercalia. This was a festival to celebrate the birth of Romulus and Remus. They sacrificed animals, cut their skin into whips, dipped them in blood, then ran around the town flogging women with them to bless them with fertility. They also had a lover's lottery, where all the names of the available young women were put into a box, and whoever you picked, you were paired up with for a year. And E-Harmony was born.

6) Valentine is the second most popular last name for vampires.

7) A really good movie to watch today is Year of the Dog. It'll get your priorities in order.


Happy Valentine's Day War!