In an effort to get their slacker god’s attention, they established a festival in his honor.  They called it Lupercalia.  As bad at reckoning months as they were at building roads (it was impossible to leave the city because all their roads led right back to Rome), they held this early April holiday on February 15.

Because it was a spring holiday, and because Lupercus apparently didn’t give a good goddam how many Romans were devoured by wolves, and because the Romans wore no underwear beneath their tunics, Lupercalia gradually evolved into a kind of swingers’ holiday.

On Lupercalia Eve, young Roman girls wrote their names on slips of paper that were placed into jars.  The following day, every eligible young man in Rome withdrew a slip of paper from the jar, and the girl whose name he had withdrawn became his lover for the year.

Later, in the early years of Christianity, Emperor Claudius II started worrying that married men might prefer to stay home and have sex with their wives rather than march off to some godforsaken barbarian backwater to kill disgusting savages.  He therefore ordered his soldiers not to get married, and priests were instructed not to marry soldiers.

(Few soldiers wanted to marry priests, so this wasn’t a big problem.)

One old priest thought the emperor’s policy was unfair.  It wasn’t so much that he wanted to marry any soldiers—he enjoyed playing the field—but he felt that he ought to be able to perform the holy rite of matrimony for soldiers who wanted to marry women.  He began conducting secret Christian marriages, except they obviously weren’t secret: he was quickly arrested and imprisoned. And on Lupercalia Eve (February 14) of 270 AD, his head was chopped off.

That priest’s name was--Marius.  Arrested, imprisoned, and beheaded right alongside him, however, was another priest who’d been performing secret marriages.   This was a handsome young friend of Marius’s named Valentine.

(There’s a story that during his imprisonment Valentine fell in love with the blind daughter of his jailer, and another story about the emperor’s having been so moved by his eloquent defense that he offered to spare Valentine his life if he would convert from Christianity.  But there’s also a story about an old lady putting her dog in the microwave, and you don’t see me talking about that.)

Later, people forgot about old Marius, who hadn’t been very photogenic, and the handsome Valentine was canonized as a saint.  Eventually the Christian Church took control of the calendar.  They moved Lupercalia back a day and renamed it St. Valentine’s Day.  No one objected to this change, as Lupercus still hadn’t done a damn thing to save anyone from wolves and the Romans still weren’t wearing underwear beneath their tunics.

And so St. Valentine’s Day came to be celebrated as a harbinger of spring, a glorious celebration of Christian marriage and old-fashioned pagan fornication.   Centuries passed.  Christianity became more widespread, the calendar was finally straightened out, and the holiday finally evolved into what it is today: a glorious midwinter celebration of passion, romance, and toe-curling sex.

In some countries the holiday is also celebrated by married couples.

(St. Valentine was removed from the Christian Calendar in 1969 because the church could not abide one of its sacred holidays being so flagrantly commercialized.)

This Week in History

Historically, the middle two weeks of February have been pretty ugly.

Bad Endings

King Richard II of England, who had been deposed in 1399, died "mysteriously" on February 14, 1400.

Timur Lenk (also known as Timur the Lame, Tamerlane, Tamberlaine, and Mr. Tambourine Man) died "mysteriously" during an expedition to China on February 18, 1405.

King James I of Scotland was assassinated on February 21, 1437.

George, the English Duke of Clarence, was convicted of treason against his brother King Edward IV and murdered in the tower of London on February 18, 1478.

On February 13, 1542, Henry VIII of England’s Vth wife, Catherine Howard, was executed for adultery.

Martin Luther just plain died on February 18, 1546.

On February 12, 1554, Lady (and former queen) Jane Grey was executed for high treason in England.

Michelangelo Buonarotti died on February 18, 1564.

Roman philosopher and mathematician Giordano Bruno was betrayed to the Inquisition and burned as a heretic on February 17, 1600.

Celebrated French dramatist and comedian Moliere collapsed on stage and died on February 17, 1673.

Captain James Cook was murdered in Hawaii on February 14, 1779.

German philosopher Immanuel Kant died on February 12, 1804.

Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky died on February 9, 1881.

On February 13, 1883, German composer and posthumous Hitler idol Richard Wagner died.   Almost exactly eleven years later (Feb. 12, 1894), German pianist and composer, and the first husband of Wagner’s wife Cosima, also died.

A bunch of Al Capone’s thugs killed seven members of the Bugs Moran gang in a Chicago garage on February 14, 1929 (the infamous "Lupercalia Massacre").

Nobel laureate Andre Gide died on February 19, 1951.

Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was "mysteriously" murdered on February 12, 1961.

Malcolm X was murdered in New York on February 21, 1965.

The father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, died on February 18, 1967.

Theolonius Monk and Lee Strasberg died on February 17, 1982.

On February 22, 1987, Andy Warhol died.

Supreme Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping died on February 19, 1997.

Bad Beginnings

Michael Romanov was elected Tsar of Russia on February 21, 1613, beginning the oppressive Romanov line.

Napoleon Bonaparte established himself as the first consul in France on February 19, 1800.

On February 22, 1862, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as president of the Confederate States of America.

The U.S. battleship Maine blew up "mysteriously" in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, beginning the Spanish-American war.

China’s Manchu dynasty, led by emperor Pu Yi, abdicated on February 12, 1912, allowing the establishment of a provisional republic under Sun Yat-sen, eventually causing Red China.

The German army launched an attack on Verdun on February 21, 1916; the battle would last nine months and claim over 970,000 lives.

Friedrich Ebert was elected the first president of the German Republic on February 11, 1919.  President Ebert brought about the Weimar constitution that eventually resulted in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy announced on February 9, 1950, that he had evidence that there were Communists in the State Department.

Fidel Castro was sworn in as the prime minister of Cuba on February 16, 1959.

Misplaced Optimism

On February 16, 1918, Lithuania proclaimed its independence from Russia.  On February 9, 1929, the governments of Poland, Romania, Estonia, and Latvia signed a pact with Russia renouncing war.  Exactly five years later, Romania signed a mutual defense agreement with Greece, Yugoslavia, and Turkey.  Total World War II death toll for these nine countries: 7,107,200.

Good News, Bad News

A bomb exploded in the dining room of St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace on February 17, 1880.  Tsar Alexander II survived.

Almanac Fun Fact

On February 19, 1807, Aaron Burr became the first U.S. vice president to be arrested.   He was also the first sitting vice president to kill a man— previous vice presidents had only managed the trick standing up.  But the two events were unrelated.

Mr. Burr had tied Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 presidential election, and the House of Representatives had broken the tie by throwing their weight behind Jefferson, whom they made president.  Burr was given the vice presidency as a consolation prize, or possibly a practical joke.

Vice President Burr was often irritated by Alexander Hamilton, so he shot and killed him.  Although it had been a fair duel, Burr was indicted for murder.  He was never arrested for the shooting and wasn’t even removed from office.  (He liked to point out that there was no controlling legal authority to prevent a vice president from shooting Alexander Hamilton.)

After he had served his term as vice president, Burr moved to the southwest and decided to establish his own empire.  Fortunately there were controlling legal authorities that prohibited the establishment of empires.  The president had him arrested on February 19, 1807.

Burr was ultimately acquitted.

Trivia Solution:  The first magazine published in America was (a) The American Magazine, subtitled "A Monthly View of the Political State of the British Colonies."  Give yourself ten points for a correct answer.  Give yourself five points for thinking it was (b), (c), or (d), because Benjamin Franklin did indeed publish the first edition of his own magazine a mere three days later.  However, you’ll also need to deduct ten points because this was not Poor Richard’s Almanack (which was after all only a lousy almanac) but a periodical entitled "General Magazine and Historical Chronicle."  Give yourself fifty points if you answered (e) Common Sense, because at least you’re honest.

Almanac Challenge

Apparently it did not rain jelly beans in St. Louis this weekend, so my record of prognostication against the Farmer’s Almanac® is a woeful 0-2.  The Farmer’s Almanac® predicts that a storm will head up the coast from the mid-Atlantic and dump six to twelve inches of snow throughout the northeast between February 20 and 23.   The Moron’s Almanac™ predicts sunny skies with temperatures in the sixties from New York to Boston during the same period.

Results will be reported in this space in the next edition of the Almanac.

Remember, this is not the Farmer’s Almanac®.  This is the Moron’s Almanac™.  Please try not to get us mixed up: it confuses us and embarrasses the farmers.  Thanks.

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The first American magazine went on sale on February 13, 1741. What was it called?

a. The American Magazine

b. Poor Richard’s Almanac

c. Pour Richard’s Almanac

d. Poor Richard’s Almanack