Where the Heart is…

The time has come and gone for the worldly holiday called Valentine’s Day. Many things can be brought up about this day as can be all the other holidays. Honestly these worldly holidays are only a counterfeit to God’s own days that He had established for us. I will bring up some of the common things that are associated with this particular day as well as things of greater importance. From this we need to see truly where our Hearts are when it comes to God and His Word which we claim to hold to such high esteem and holiness.

First we will go back in time before Valentine’s Day and look at another holiday that the Roman’s enjoyed celebrating. Lupercalia is what that ancient day was called and was normally celebrated on February 13^th thru the 15^th. Two male goats and a dog where sacrificed, the sacrificial feast followed, after which the Luperci cut thongs from the skins of the victims, which were called februa, dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed goats, in imitation of Lupercus, and ran round the walls of the old Palatine city, the line of which was marked with stones, with the thongs in their hands in two bands, striking the people who crowded near. Girls and young women would line up on their route to receive lashes from these whips. This was supposed to ensure fertility, prevent sterility in women and ease the pains of childbirth. In the last decade of the 5^th century this celebration came to its end and was abolished. This gives you a brief rundown of what took place during the celebration.

Next we will look a little at Valentine’s Day. Historically there were at least three Saints by the name Valentine and as far as all is known the stories surrounding them that are used as the back drop of today’s Valentine’s Day are all questionable, here is the more commonly known one. The most popular martyrology associated with Saint Valentine was that he was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry and for ministering to Christians, who were persecuted under the Roman Empire; during his imprisonment, he is said to have healed the daughter of his jailer Asterius. Legend states that before his execution he wrote her a letter "from your Valentine" as a farewell. The interesting part is that it wasn’t until around the 11^th, 12^th, and 13^th century when it was associated with courtly love. Then by the 15^th century it had evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards. Nowadays it has become more of a commercialized version of the 15^th century.

Is Valentine’s Day a replacement for Lupercalia? I would think so, even though historically they say there is no connection between them. Is it a coincident that Valentine’s Day falls on the same day as Lupercalia? Considering how all the other worldly holidays have similarly have coincidental timing with ancient pagan holy days, I would side with that evidence that like all the others this too is just another replacement of a pagan holy day.

But the clincher to all of this is something that all those Christians that profess to be followers of Christ do not once think about as they go about celebrating a worldly holiday is that God has setup TRUE HOLY DAYS for us to partake of and enjoy throughout the year. That to me is the saddest truth of all. We are to be doing the things Jesus had done, including celebrating God’s Holy Days, but yet those same people quickly dismiss God’s Days and adopt the World’s Days. So if we look at John 15:18, 19 where we see Jesus making the point of being hated by the world because he has chosen us out of it, then we have to look at that same scripture in the light of if we are doing things that puts us in being loved by the world. If you love Jesus, you hate the world. If you love the world, you hate Jesus. I know this sounds really bad, but it is true unless you want me to say Jesus is wrong and you are right.

Should our love for one another be for one day only or should it be year round?

We all have to choose where we want to place our Heart and as the scriptures point out in Matthew 6:21, where your treasure is, that is where your heart will be also.

VALENTINE’S DAY

February was considered the final month of the Roman year, and on the 15th, citizens celebrated the festival of Lupercalia. Originally, this week-long party honored the god Faunus, who watched over shepherds in the hills. The festival also marked the coming of spring. Later on, it became a holiday honoring Romulus and Remus, the twins who founded Rome after being raised by a she-wolf in a cave. Eventually, Lupercalia became a multi-purpose event: it celebrated the fertility of not only the livestock but people as well.

To kick off the festivities, an order of priests gathered before the Lupercale on the Palatine hill, the sacred cave in which Romulus and Remus were nursed by their wolf-mother. The priests then sacrificed a dog for purification, and a pair of young male goats for fertility. The hides of the goats were cut into strips, dipped in blood, and taken around the streets of Rome. These bits of hide were touched to both fields and women as a way of encouraging fertility in the coming year. Girls and young women would line up on their route to receive lashes from these whips. There is a theory that this tradition may have survived in the form of certain ritual Easter Monday whippings.

After the priests concluded the fertility rites, young women placed their names in a jar. Men drew names in order to choose a partner for the rest of the celebrations -- not unlike later customs of entering names in a Valentine lottery.

To the Romans, Lupercalia was a monumental event each year. When Mark Antony was the master of the Luperci College of Priests, he chose the festival of Lupercalia in 44 BC as the time to offer the crown to Julius Caesar. By about the fifth century, however, Rome was beginning to move towards Christianity, and Pagan rites were frowned upon. Lupercalia was seen as something only the lower classes did, and eventually the festival ceased to be celebrated.

Valentine's Day derives from a Christianized version of a pagan holiday. Just as the Christians stole Christmas and Easter, from the pagans, they took this celebration from the Roman pagans.

If you do not adhere to Christology, then why would you want to celebrate to the name of a Catholic Saint who had nothing to do with the original festival?

The name "Valentine" comes from one of two Christian martyrs of the 3rd century. One describes a Roman Christian martyred during the persecution of Claudis II, the other, a bishop of Terni who got martyred in Rome. (Most Christian celebrations have a preoccupation with death and martyrdom.) There occurs several versions of the Christian legend but no one knows the truth for sure. Probably at least one of them did live and died, but we have little else to go on.

In pre-Christian Rome, people celebrated Lupercalia, a Roman holiday that took place during the ides of February (the 15th). They believed that the goddess Juno Februata (where the name February comes from) inflicted her "love fever" on the young and unwary. The fertility festival of Lupercalia (in honor of the pastoral god Lupercus) involved sexual excesses such as running around nude. The festival included the sacrificing of a goats whereupon women would be whipped with the hides of the animals just slain. Women would line up for the men to hit them, believing that it would make them fertile.

For years the Christian church tried to suppress the festival of Lupercalia. Interestingly, the Church did not object to the festival for its love celebrations but for the pagan beliefs that rejected the Christian god. In 496 C.E., Pope Gelasius abolished Lupercalia, and later the celebration of Valentine, named after the legendary St. Valentine, was established. Cupid was recast into a cherub, and the Lupercalia festival continues much as it had before, but without the sexual excesses.

So the idea of Valentine's Day did not originate from Christianity, but from "heretic" pagans.

Around the same time, the Normans celebrated Galatin's Day. Galatin meant "lover of women." That was likely confused with St. Valentine's Day at some point, in part because they sound alike.

As the years went on, the holiday grew sweeter. Chaucer and Shakespeare romanticized it in their work, and it gained popularity throughout Britain and the rest of Europe. Handmade paper cards became the tokens-du-jour in the Middle Ages.

Eventually, the tradition made its way to the New World. The industrial revolution ushered in factory-made cards in the 19th century. And in 1913, Hallmark Cards of Kansas City, Mo., began mass producing valentines. February has not been the same since.

Today, the holiday is big business: According to market research firm IBIS World, Valentine's Day sales reached $17.6 billion last year; this year's sales are expected to total $18.6 billion.

And so the celebration of Valentine's Day goes on, in varied ways. Many will break the bank buying jewelry and flowers for their beloveds. Others will celebrate in a SAD (that's Single Awareness Day) way, dining alone and binging on self-gifted chocolates. A few may even be spending this day the same way the early Romans did. But let's not go there.

So if you are a True believer in the TRUE GOD, should you really participate in the secular pagan holiday being portrayed as a Christian holiday?

As for me and my family we will follow only the true Holy days of the True God.