Monthly Archives: February 2007

…in the sense that greeting card makers say Valentine’s Day encourages enough card-sending to rival Christmas, and florists and candymakers also prosper. It’s also a holiday of Christian origin, which may explain some official Muslim hostility to it, being the execution date of Saint Valentine, an early Christian martyr. And there’s some pagan influence, as the day falls on the old Roman Empire’s date of the annual love lotteries of the fertility festival:

"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."

Fortunately, there’s still time to buy a card, candy or flowers if you’ve forgotten. Which is not likely if you’ve been married more than a year, or have young children. Mr. Boy, for instance, was so enthusiastic about it this year that he chipped in $2 of his own funds to get Mom a stuffed bear as well as a card and flowers. Though Mom is of Welsh descent, fortunately that was a long time ago, so we’re not required to carve any wooden love spoons for her.

UPDATE  For you lucky folks in the Northeast, Alan at Fresh Bilge is posting (and periodically refreshing) satellite radar images of the (possibly historic) Valentine’s Day Blizzard. Brrr.