lupercalia
February has long been a month of love and romance, celebrated for thousands of years!
Like most of what we do and celebrate now, our modern mid-February holiday known as Valentine’s Day can be traced back to pagan roots. The pagan festival Lupercalia, celebrated as far back as first century AD, was a Roman fire festival of fertility and rebirth, recognizing the coming of spring and the reawakening of the fertile earth. The festival was held between February 13-15 and was a time of matchmaking and rituals to increase the fertility of the participants and to purify the city. The word February actually comes from the root word februa which were instruments of purification used at this time.
The root word in Lupercalia, lupus, means wolf in latin. This was to honor the mythical founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, who were saved by a she-wolf after being abandoned by their parents. The luperci or priests were young men divided into two groups based on their lineage to Romulus or Remus. They would feast and drink to their hearts content and then meet in a cave where rituals and sacrifices of dogs and goats to the she-wolf would take place, a tradition I think we are all glad did not survive the ages! The festival would continue with the pairing off of the young men with women in a matchmaking rite that involved placing names in a box and drawing them to determine your mate. We still see the remnants of this tradition in the way that we exchange valentine cards today!
Though the theory of Valentine’s day has it’s own historical recount, it’s likely that St. Valentine’s Day was a great way of converting the wild traditions of pagans into a controlled holiday managed by the church. The celebrations were transformed into a tale of martyrdom for love and marriage as those in power knew it would be easier to transition pagans into similar traditions hosted by the church than to eradicate their wild celebrations all together. We can also see this with other modern holidays that mimic and fall at the times of pagan festivals. Thankfully, our modern holiday has found a sort of balance between the two, focusing on romance and partnership to this day. In a tale as old as time, we carry the past of our ancestors in all that we do and will ever be done. Let’s not forget to let ourselves be enchanted by our roots and how far we have come thanks to them. And so it is. Onward and Blessed Be.
