The Valentine's Day cliches have always puzzled me. Traditionally the males of our species go out and buy some traditional token of love, the price of which is depent upon how successful the male has been in the eternal rat race of capitalism. The reasons why the males of our species have been driven to this sort of behaviour is simple, the evotionary imperative to mate comples them to to please the females of the species, so that the females might be more willing towards the males advances. To put it plainly men buy Valentine day's crap to women and the women recipricate with sexual acts. This sort of exchange of material goods for sex is on everyother day of the year known as prostitution.
The day has gotten its name from St. Valentine, a name shared by no less than 14 people who the Catholic Church saw fit to canonize. 3 of the fellows met their end on February 14th. One was priest in Rome during the persecution of Christians during the reign of Claudius II, one was a bishop of the town known today as Terni and the third one was a martyred somewhere in Northern Africa, where he was apparently spreading the word of God to an unwilling audience. So based on this information we are commemorating the day when three blokes called Valentine met their end, mostly like through some really unpleasent way, at the hands of heathens and heretics. Now what on earth does this have to do with love, friendship and prostitution?
The anwser is again rather simple. Its Capitalism at its finest. Valentine's Day is one of those holiday's that seem to excist only to provide people with a good excuse to buy stuff, much like most holiday's when all the shops are closed have no religious meaning at all to most of us(Seriously can anyone really explain to me what the Pinksterdag was all about in Holland), but the unions become hard line fundamentalist christians when it comes to days of from work. But I think the marketing machines of many industries have left several really juicy ones unexploited, the muslim Ramadan for example, its an ENTIRE MONTH.
Surely any retail business would love the opportunities of commericial exploitation offered by a month long religious holiday and it shouldn't be that difficult, when you consider the history of Islam. The great conflict between Muhammed and the Meccans had nothing to do with religion, the Meccan's were scared that Mo's teachings would ruin their profitable business opportunities provided by the pilgrims to the sacred places that were in Mecca before Islam. Thankfuly Muhammed was an exceptionally bright fellow, for a person who had religious visions(the side effects of talking to God generally include some form of madness) and his elegant solution of making Mecca the holiest place in Islam still warms the hearts and wallets of Meccans to this day.
But I digress. Overall St. Valentine's day doesn't make any sense to me and it never has for that matter. Why do we need a special day to celebrate love and friendship, beyond the points made so far, when everyday should be a celebration of our love towards one another?
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