CREATIVE WRITING | WHAT EXACTLY IS VALENTINE'S DAY PART 2

Hello lovely people, as promised yesterday, I've come with the gist and continuation of what we began with yesterday about valentine.
Yesterday we talked about lupercalia, Fauna, Nimrod and how the roots of valentine bore roots into being.
Et me continue today and spoil your minds and moods😂💔

Okay, now the month of February was sacred to the month of the goddess of the fever of love, marriage and women called Juno Februata, also known as Februa. This feast fell on the 14th of February. During this feast, young women wrote their names on pieces of papers and put them in a large bowl where each single men would then turn by turn draw the billets from the bowl. And the name you draw, you're free to do whatsoever you want for that day with the lady.

Oh I forgot to mention yesterday that lupercalia feast ran from the 13-15th of February.
Sometimes the partners gotten from the draw of billets could remain partners for 12months and sometimes even marriage resulted from this raffle practice.
So these days were used to celebrate fertility in Rome. Which was a pagan festival day which goes back to the honoring of Nimrod. This was what happened during this time in ancient history.

So where did the name "valentine day" come from?🤔
Valentine's day is said to be named after some few christian Martyrs, who the Roman Catholic church named, saints. According to history a certain roman emperor Claudius II imposed a ban on marriages because so many young men were dodging the soldier draft by getting married😂 and at that time only single men had to enter the army. You get the point.

There was a Roman priest who had converted to Christianity when it was a prosecutor religion called Valentinus of Terni and according to the stories, he used to marry couples in secret. It was also said that he wore a ring with a cupid on it which is used as a symbol of love (we'll look into it later), and this helped to identify him easily.
When he was exposed, he was kept in prison for execution.

While in prison awaiting to be beheaded, he was visited by young lovers with notes on how better their love became, he also became a symbol of love in marriages after he was beheaded and martyrised.
Here's an amazing fact, while in prison, my man fell in love with the jailer's daughter and on the day he was taken to be killed (on February 14), he wrote a love note for her and signed it "from your Valentine". Awwwnnn catholic priest found love😅. Thus the name valentine was born.

The said saint valentine was beheaded on 14 February 269 AD. He was then named the patron saint of engaged couples, happy marriages, love and lovers.
Later on after Rome adopted Christianity and the Roman empire fell, and the holy Roman empire began, the Roman Catholic church made changes. The church was opposed to this display of open eroticism and sexuality that occured during lupercalia. Follow me well now, it's getting more interesting.
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Now in the 5th century, pope Gelasius declared February 14th a holy day in honour of valentine instead of the Roman god, lupercus.
As with most non-bibkical customs found in the church today, Lupercalia was simply give a Christian sounding nans and adopted into the "universal" catholic church. They adopted some of the pagan celebrations during lupercalia to reflect Christian beliefs.

For example, as part of the Juni Februata ritual, instead of pulling girls names from boxes, both boys and girls chose the names of martyred saints from a box. You see that?
So the human wisdom pope Gelasius used to get rid of the people celebrating lupercalia was to shift it from 15th of February to 14 February and rebrand it as valentine's day!
Then associating it to various martyrs who were attributed different stories and legends.

After drawing those names, they were expected to emulate the life of those saints whose names they had drawn. And so we get valentine's day from a rebranding of a pagan festival worshipping fertility. They did this to make it easy on the pagan converts whowere coming into their new popular Christianity. These pagans were unwilling to give up their pagan rituals and celebrations. Just the same as we see today with people who receive Christ and find it difficult to let go of demonic traditions and skull worships.

So in a bid of putting an halt to the growing paganism of the church, the Roman Catholic church took the route of Blending and incorporating. Forgetting to note that changing the name of a pagan ritual doesn't change the fact that it is still a pagan ritual. So this is where valentine day comes from and which is completely pagan, which during the middle ages it was incorporated with love and that's where what most of it we know of today comes from.

Okay okay, too much food for one day as my father always says😂
We will continue the next and last part tomorrow, where we will be looking at the various symbols which are used on this famous valentine's day. I guess you know them already, it's gonna be a brief recap.
God bless you, good morning beloved, I pray the eyes of your understanding be enlightened by this in Jesus name! 🙏🏾❤️