>> So, the “history channel” is the ultimate source for all things pagan? And all those mentions of the holiday in books are - oh, who needs to read that? <<
Ultimate source? No. History always loves interviewing authors of books for their stories about UFOs, Big Foot, “hidden gospels,” etc. That doesn’t mean they’re not complete and utter B.S.
As for Valentine’s Day being associated with Lupercalia, the idea started with Alban Butler (1756-1759), but no-one knows where he got his ideas about Lupercalia, which had absolutely nothing to do with drawing names from a jar to couple. In fact, on Lupercalia, if you saw a women, you were supposed to strip naked, grab a leather thong, and chase after her, beating her. So NOT romantic! Butler seems to have realized Valentine’s Day fell on roughly the same day as Lupercalia and made the rest up. Only, as explained, he was wrong about which Valentine’s Day fell in ancient days near Lupercalia.
But as History Channel typically does, it presents disproven evidence to make its case for belief in anything metaphysical BESIDES the Christian God, and never mentions the proof the evidence is false.
By the way, ICYWC, there’s also absolutely zero evidence that there was ever a goddess Eostre, that anyone in Great Britain worshipped her, that Eastermonad had anything to do with her; Bede simply hadn’t known that Christians had been on Great Britain centuries earlier, so presumed Eastermonad referred to a different Easter than the Christian one, which is named after facing East, which, being named after Eos, is where you get your tiniest connection to any pagan God. But that’s like saying going to Church on Saturday is like worshipping Saturn.
Speaking of Saturn, there’s also no connection with Saturnalia and Christmas. In fact, the ties to it and Christmas are based on confusing it with the Feast of Sol Invictus, which is a LOT more like Christmas. In fact, it was a pagan invention centuries after Christmas to imitate Christmas. It’s about as related to the origins of Christmas as the Constanza family holiday of Festivus.
Ok but do you understand that this stuff on the istory hannel was stuff I had already read about elsewhere? So I was just passing it on? Shall we argue tediously about Bullfinch’s Mythology next?