The origins of today’s festival of candy and cupids is dark, bloody and confusing.

I am really surprised in this era of moral reckoning it is still celebrated and wonder can you support #metoo and buy into the perceived popular symbolism Valentines Day

For the exact origin a good place to start is ancient Rome, where men hit on women by, hitting them – seriously – the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia. The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain. Young women would line up for the men to hit them as they believed this would make them fertile. There was also a matchmaking lottery, in which young men drew the names of women from a jar.

Fast forward 300 years – Emperor Claudius II executed two men — both named Valentine — on Feb. 14 of different years in the 3rd century A.D. Their martyrdom was honored by the Catholic Church with the celebration of St. Valentine’s Day (which is no longer part of the Catholic Calendar as the feast day of Saint Valentine was removed in 1969 – I am not kidding).

Pope Gelasius I in the 5th century combined St. Valentine’s Day with Lupercalia to expel the horrific pagan rituals. Basically Christians put their clothes back on but it stayed a day of fertility and love.

William Shakespeare helped romanticize Valentine’s Day in his play Julius Caesar, written in 1599, as it begins during the Lupercalia. Mark Antony is instructed by Caesar to strike his wife Calpurnia, in the hope that she will be able to conceive. The feast gained popularity as a result throughout Britain and the rest of Europe.

In 1913, Hallmark Cards began mass producing valentines and today it is HUGE business with this year’s sales expected to total $18.6 billion.

Another case where Religion stepped in and took over a pagan festival only for popular culture to take it over… I will celebrate by buying 50% off chocolate tomorrow.