Okay, so tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. I always saw the holiday as an opportunity for women to bitch at men for not knowing what they really like (what girl wouldn’t love the DVD box set of “24″?). Where did this wretched holiday originate?

With the Christians. The name, obviously, comes from a guy named St. Valentine. The problem, however, is that the Catholic Church has records of three Christian martyrs named Valentine. Conveniently, according to legend, they all happened to die on February 14th. The more widely-adopted explanation for the mid-February date is that the Church wanted to overshadow the pagan holiday of Lupercalla.

This is a true shame, because Lupercalla was pretty much the shit. After a goat was sacrificed, the boys of the ‘hood would cut it into strips, marinate them with blood, and then run around the neighborhood, slapping women with the pieces of goat flesh. Unlike unappreciative modern women, the Roman ladies wanted nothing more than to be struck by a former goat thigh, as it made them more fertile for the upcoming year.

So, to honor the Romans, who are responsible for both Penn’s motto and our Super Bowls’ enumeration, Penn should make Lupercalla an official holiday for the 2008-2009 school year. We already have Flag Day, Ivy Day and Easter on the calendar. Why not another one?

With all the fertility abounding, we may even see an influx of small children playing on the Button.

Tags: fertile women, God, Jack Bauer, sacrificial goat, the Button

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Penn, Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.