The Spin

Posts Tagged ‘sacrificial goat’

Bloody goats and fertile ladies? Sign me up.

Vaughn Stewart

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.

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