Saint Valentine's Day

cybercore

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Valentine's Day History and things

There are varying opinions as to the origin of Valentine's Day. Some experts state that it originated from St. Valentine, a Roman who was martyred for refusing to give up Christianity. He died on February 14, 269 A.D., the same day that had been devoted to love lotteries. Legend also says that St. Valentine left a farewell note for the jailer's daughter, who had become his friend, and signed it "From Your Valentine". Other aspects of the story say that Saint Valentine served as a priest at the temple during the reign of Emperor Claudius. Claudius then had Valentine jailed for defying him. In 496 A.D. Pope Gelasius set aside February 14 to honour St. Valentine.

Over time, February 14 has become the date for exchanging love messages and a celebration of St. Valentine, the patron saint of lovers. The date is marked by sending poems and simple gifts, such as flowers, to loved ones and secret loves. By far, Valentine's Day Flowers are the most popular gift today.

In the United States, Miss Esther Howland is given credit for sending the first valentine cards. Commercial valentines were introduced in the 1800's and now the date is very commercialised. The town of Loveland, Colorado, does a large post office business around February 14. The spirit of good continues as valentines are sent out with sentimental verses and children exchange valentine cards at school.



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Valentine's Day, commonly shortened to Valentine's Day, is an annual commemoration held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions. The day is named after one or more early Christian martyrs, Saint Valentine, and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496 AD. It was deleted from the Roman calendar of saints in 1969 by Pope Paul VI, but its religious observance is still permitted.


The History of Saint Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day started in the time of the Roman Empire. In ancient Rome, February 14th was a holiday to honour Juno. Juno was the Queen of the Roman Gods and Goddesses. The Romans also knew her as the Goddess of women and marriage. The following day, February 15th, began the Feast of Lupercalia.


The lives of young boys and girls were strictly separate. However, one of the customs of the young people was name drawing. On the eve of the festival of Lupercalia the names of Roman girls were written on slips of paper and placed into jars. Each young man would draw a girl's name from the jar and would then be partners for the duration of the festival with the girl whom he chose. Sometimes the pairing of the children lasted an entire year, and often, they would fall in love and would later marry.


Under the rule of Emperor Claudius II Rome was involved in many bloody and unpopular campaigns. Claudius the Cruel was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join his military leagues. He believed that the reason was that roman men did not want to leave their loves or families. As a result, Claudius cancelled all marriages and engagements in Rome. The good Saint Valentine was a priest at Rome in the days of Claudius II. He and Saint Marius aided the Christian martyrs and secretly married couples, and for this kind deed Saint Valentine was apprehended and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off. He suffered martyrdom on the 14th day of February, about the year 270. At that time it was the custom in Rome, a very ancient custom, indeed, to celebrate in the month of February the Lupercalia, feasts in honour of a heathen god. On these occasions, amidst a variety of pagan ceremonies, the names of young women were placed in a box, from which they were drawn by the men as chance directed.



The pastors of the early Christian Church in Rome endeavoured to do away with the pagan element in these feasts by substituting the names of saints for those of maidens. And as the Lupercalia began about the middle of February, the pastors appear to have chosen Saint Valentine's Day for the celebration of this new feaSt. So it seems that the custom of young men choosing maidens for valentines, or saints as patrons for the coming year, arose in this way.



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St. Valentine's Story

Let me introduce myself. My name is Valentine. I lived in Rome during the third century. That was long, long ago! At that time, Rome was ruled by an emperor named Claudius. I didn't like Emperor Claudius, and I wasn't the only one! A lot of people shared my feelings.

Claudius wanted to have a big army. He expected men to volunteer to join. Many men just did not want to fight in wars. They did not want to leave their wives and families. As you might have guessed, not many men signed up. This made Claudius furious. So what happened? He had a crazy idea. He thought that if men were not married, they would not mind joining the army. So Claudius decided not to allow any more marriages. Young people thought his new law was cruel. I thought it was preposterous! I certainly wasn't going to support that law!

Did I mention that I was a priest? One of my favourite activities was to marry couples. Even after Emperor Claudius passed his law, I kept on performing marriage ceremonies -- secretly, of course. It was really quite exciting. Imagine a small candlelit room with only the bride and groom and myself. We would whisper the words of the ceremony, listening all the while for the steps of soldiers.

One night, we did hear footsteps. It was scary! Thank goodness the couple I was marrying escaped in time. I was caught. (Not quite as light on my feet as I used to be, I guess.) I was thrown in jail and told that my punishment was death.

I tried to stay cheerful. And do you know what? Wonderful things happened. Many young people came to the jail to visit me. They threw flowers and notes up to my window. They wanted me to know that they, too, believed in love.

One of these young people was the daughter of the prison guard. Her father allowed her to visit me in the cell. Sometimes we would sit and talk for hours. She helped me to keep my spirits up. She agreed that I did the right thing by ignoring the Emperor and going ahead with the secret marriages. On the day I was to die, I left my friend a little note thanking her for her friendship and loyalty. I signed it, "Love from your Valentine."

I believe that note started the custom of exchanging love messages on Valentine's Day. It was written on the day I died, February 14, 269 A.D. Now, every year on this day, people remember. But most importantly, they think about love and friendship. And when they think of Emperor Claudius, they remember how he tried to stand in the way of love, and they laugh -- because they know that love can't be beaten!



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Valentine Traditions

Hundreds of years ago in England, many children dressed up as adults on Valentine's Day. They went singing from home to home. One verse they sang was:

Good morning to you, valentine;
Curl your locks as I do mine ---
Two before and three behind.
Good morning to you, valentine.

In Wales wooden love spoons were carved and given as gifts on February 14th. Hearts, keys and keyholes were favourite decorations on the spoons. The decoration meant, "You unlock my heart!"

In the Middle Ages, young men and women drew names from a bowl to see who their valentines would be. They would wear these names on their sleeves for one week. To wear your heart on your sleeve now means that it is easy for other people to know how you are feeling.

In some countries, a young woman may receive a gift of clothing from a young man. If she keeps the gift, it means she will marry him.

Some people used to believe that if a woman saw a robin flying overhead on Valentine's Day, it meant she would marry a sailor. If she saw a sparrow, she would marry a poor man and be very happy. If she saw a goldfinch, she would marry a millionaire.

A love seat is a wide chair. It was first made to seat one woman and her wide dress. Later, the love seat or courting seat had two sections, often in an S-shape. In this way, a couple could sit together -- but not too closely!

Think of five or six names of boys or girls you might marry, As you twist the stem of an apple, recite the names until the stem comes off. You will marry the person whose name you were saying when the stem fell off.

Pick a dandelion that has gone to seed. Take a deep breath and blow the seeds into the wind. Count the seeds that remain on the stem. That is the number of children you will have.

If you cut an apple in half and count how many seeds are inside, you will also know how many children you will have.




More:

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Valentine's Day - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
With Valentine's Day upon us, everybody is in full forced-romantic mode. Right now, people are frantically planning dinners, buying flowers and thinking about chocolates or other gifts, but nobody is asking the important question here:

What about the zombies?

More Zombie Valentine's Day: Til Undeath Do Us Part


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Zombie Portraits creator Rob Sacchetto has released zombie-themed greeting cards for Valentine's Day, Christmas and birthdays. Of course, there's also a "get well soon" card.


It's a cold, cruel world for zombies: a violent death, an unwanted reanimation, a constant aching hunger while their bodies continue to experience morbid decomposition and the unenviable task of constantly trying to catch prey that is smarter, faster and better armed. Even when one is caught, other zombies share in the kill, leaving little to any one individual.

But in those quiet moments of contemplation, can zombies find love?

They can and they do. And it's a beautiful thing between two consenting zombies wanting to thrust their macabre, rotting pelvic areas together with morbid intensity before shambling off mindlessly in search of food again.

The website Zombie Connect bills itself as the "Official Dating Site of the Walking Dead" and has a feature that allows its users to zombify their pictures with a variety of facial features, such as sunken eyes, skull noses, bloody mouths, scars, blood spatter and wounds, weapons that can be stuck in at various angles, and a wonderful trio of sliding bars to adjust decomposition.

Once your picture is uploaded, the site starts its Matchmaker engine, matching your gender with what you're seeking and the activity (Anything Goes, Casual Feeding or Long-Term Massacre) and shows you which matches sync up with your tastes. The potential matches pop up, displaying dozens of pictures of self-disfigured zombies with names and a brief type that ranges from "shy shambler" to "responsibly rotten."

The people behind the dating site Mingle2 created ZombieHarmony, a satirical dating website to help zombies find that special someone who matches them in terms of speed (slow moving, fast moving, immobile) and general compatibility (all limbs intact, some limbs intact, no limbs).


More Zombie Valentine's Day: Til Undeath Do Us Part


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Zombie dating website Zombie Connect has a built-in feature that can zombify any picture, including this one of the author.


The site displays zombies of both sexes on the front page, with tag lines including "I enjoy long, slow, lumbering walks on the beach," "I've gone one eye, half a torso and a whole lot of heart," and one that begins with a simple "HRRRRRNNNGGGGG," which seems oddly appropriate. It also has the best disclaimer of the group: "If you go on a date with a zombie, we cannot be held liable for contributing to the apocalypse."

There's also the Zombie Passions website, featuring numerous groups in which you can find your perfect partner. Aside from obvious groups such as Male Seeking Female Zombie, the site allows you to be more specific with your tastes, even type of partner. Zombie (Meteor Related), Zombie Groupie, Seeking Zombie for Dinner Companion, and even Couple Seeking Transgender Zombie -- proving once again that no fetish is too narrow for the Internet.

Not all the sites are tongue in cheek, though. Andrea Sacchetto of Zombie Portraits says her site has helped numerous zombie enthusiast couples who have incorporated their interest into their relationships. Zombie Portraits has released a set of greeting cards -- including a blood-spattered card that reads, "I Chew Chew Chews You!" -- for people who think Valentine's Day hearts should be bloody and still beating.

The greeting cards let zombies say those sweet things that they might not be able to say, either because they can't quite put it into words or because they are missing a crucial epiglottis. From a Valentine's Day card to a blood-spattered birthday zombie celebrating over a birthday cranium, the four-pack of greeting cards really hits close to the heart.

"We had a party here and we had all the images for the cards," says Sacchetto, whose friends matched the brain-devouring zombie picture with the slogan that was a winking reference to a classic "Simpsons" episode. "The Valentine's Day card is the one that everybody looks at, maybe because 'The Simpsons' is so pervasive in our culture," she adds. "It's not a conventional Valentine. You gotta go a little further to impress people these days."

It doesn't stop with just telling your zombified partner that you love him or her, either. At the most recent ZomBcon convention in Seattle, there was a complete zombie wedding officiated by geek legend Bruce Campbell. But it's not particularly unusual anymore; zombie weddings are popping up everywhere, from quiet Midwestern states such as Kansas to the snowy steppes of Russia.

It might not be for everybody, but it hits just the right note to those for whom "til death do us part" sounds like a temporary condition.



More Zombie Valentine's Day: Til Undeath Do Us Part
 
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