Saint Valentine's Day

Saint Valentine's Day, which is among the most annoying Hallmark holidays whose sole purpose is to guilt us into pumping a few bucks into the wounded economy or else face the wrath of a disappointed lover who we privately live in fear of. In researching this listing, I decided to look up exactly who this Saint Valentine character was and why he's got such a powerful mojo that he is the patron saint of all things nooky-related. So I went to the resource I always go to whenever I'm too lazy to do any real work – Wikipedia – and was stunned to read that Saint Valentine (in Latin, Valentinus) is the name of several (14 in all) martyred saints of ancient Rome. Of the Saint Valentine whose feast is on February 14, nothing is known except his name and that he was buried at the Via Flaminia north of Rome on February 14. It is even uncertain whether the feast of that day celebrates only one saint or more saints of the same name.�

To summarize, this Valentine character (or characters) is a completely arbitrary figure about whom nothing is known and we have no idea why he is thought of in romantic terms, but we were looking for somebody to fit our needs and finally settled on him because we were tired of waiting for someone better to come along. The association has lost any real excitement but it's comfortable and what we're used to so we'll keep the relationship going even though we know in the back of our minds that there's someone out there who could make us really happy if only we had the guts to dump the familiar and seek that person out. Valentine, in other words, is the perfect representative for romantic relationships and I suggest you all say a prayer of thanks to him tonight before climbing into bed to have sex with your significant other while you're fantasizing about Johnny Depp or Angelina Jolie.