United Church of God

Pastor's Corner - February 14th, 2020

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Pastor's Corner - February 14th, 2020

Today the world around us celebrates Valentine’s Day.

The modern celebration of Valentine’s Day has largely become one of commercialization and commerce. By the time the chocolates, cards, flowers, presents, hotel rooms, dinners, and the like are purchased, WALLETHUB.COM (https://wallethub.com/blog/valentines-day-facts/10258/) estimates that people will spend 24.7 BILLION dollars in 2020. The same source estimates that the average couple will spend $101 on dinner tonight. Men spend 3 times more than women, those married spending almost $400 on their spouses. There will be an 20% increase in use of dating and hookup apps like Tinder in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day as people look for their evening fling. For those that are unmarried, it is estimated that approximately 9 million proposals will occur today.

As with most worldly holidays, there is a view from many of, “What’s the big deal? People are expressing their love for one another, they are spreading joy and love by sharing gifts with each other, what’s the harm in that?”

Examining the origins of Valentine’s Day helps us to understand why we as Christians that are interested in pleasing our God and His Son, Jesus Christ, should avoid these holidays and the pagan origins which are at their core.

Our modern Valentine’s Day is named after St. Valentine, a priest in Rome in the late 200’s AD. The emperor at that time, Emperor Claudius II was engaged in a number of unpopular and deadly military campaigns to solidify the empire, and he banned marriages and engagements in Rome as a result of a lack of men willing to join the Roman army. He believed that the men were unwilling to join as a result of their attachment to their wives and families.

According to the story, Valentine, a catholic priest, refused to obey the edict and married young men and women in secret in direct opposition to the Emperor’s decree. He was eventually discovered, arrested, and while in jail struck up a friendship with the jailer’s daughter. He left her a farewell note on the day of his execution (February 14th, somewhere around 270 AD) signed, “From Your Valentine”. He was later sainted for the service he provided in spite of the Emperor’s injustice.

In reality, that’s only one version of the story. There are two other St. Valentines mentioned in the early literature. All of them martyrs, all of them executed February 14th. One of them was a bishop in Italy, another in a Roman province in Africa. It’s difficult to know what is true, if any of it.

“That’s it? What’s the big deal?”

The problem is, that’s not it.

Prior to this occurring, and the official beginning of Valentines Day, there was a Roman festival held from the 13th to 15th of February called Lupercalia. Lupercalia was a festival designed to honor the Roman fertility god Lupercus. There are some other mythos involved as well as to the origin of Rome and the she-wolf that helped Romulus and Remus in a cave called Lupercal.

Lupercalia involved ritual sacrifices to Lupercus, in a few designated places around Rome, one of which was the cave the she-wolf was believed to nurse Romulus and Remus. The resulting festivities involved a great deal of blood, nudity and sexual immorality. In one such ritual, the blood of a recently sacrificed goat was wiped on the forehead of two nude priests known as Luperci. The blood was wiped from them by a milk soaked piece of wool, while the Luperci laughed. This was to symbolize fertility and new life.

During the drunken festivities, nude men chased nude women with strips of goat hide known as ‘februa’ whipping them to increase their fertility. The women would line up to be whipped in order to become more fertile.

Additionally, the men would be randomly coupled with another woman through a matchmaking lottery, committing fornication with that partner for the remainder of the festival.

As time went on and Rome became more refined – Lupercalia became less sexually charged and bloody. There was less drunkenness and nudity, and some of the rituals became tamer by comparison.

In 496 AD, Pope Gelasius I determined the time had come to end Lupercalia and Christianize the festival. St. Valentine’s reputation as the patron of lovers”, made for a natural connection, and February 14th was chosen as the day to commemorate Valentine’s martyrdom.

Valentine’s Day as we know it was born. Now the festival was designed to celebrate one of the Catholic Saints. Despite the change, old habit die hard, and the festival continued to carry with it a number of the trappings of the ancient festival of Lupercalia.

The colors of red and white go back to the ritual of the blood and the milk, cupid, the rampant sexual immorality, giving of gifts, it all goes back to the pagan celebrations and rituals that made Lupercalia, Lupercalia.

This isn’t even getting into the Februa, the purification festival that predated Lupercalia. It doesn’t matter how far removed you get from a pagan festival, if that holiday occurs at the same time, and has many of the same trappings, it is still a pagan festival.

As the old adage goes, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”

God was clear in scripture as to the attitude we as Christians are supposed to have toward pagan celebrations such as these.

Deuteronomy 12:2-4

You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. And you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and burn their wooden images with fire; you shall cut down the carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place. You shall not worship the Lord your God with such things.

The apostle Paul wrote to the Church in Galatia in Galatians 4:8-11.

But then, indeed, when you did not know God, you served those which by nature are not gods. But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain.

He was referring to holidays such as Lupercalia. The ones the new gentile converts were exposed to in the society around them. During the time of the early church, Rome celebrated hundreds of festivals to their various gods, to the Emperors, and for the various times of harvest. Days and months and seasons and years. Paul was concerned because it was so enticing for these new converts to return to the life they once led once they had come to Christianity.

Based on these pagan origins – it is clear from scripture that Valentine’s Day is not something that we should celebrate if we desire to please God. God desires that His people be different from the world around us – not in line with it.

Romans 12:1-2

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

We must be a living sacrifice. One that is holy and acceptable to God. That is transformed by His Spirit, not conformed to this world.

That cannot be the case if we are entangled in pagan rituals and holidays to pagan Gods, no matter how far removed and commercialized.

Happy Sabbath to you all! I hope and pray it is rewarding and spiritually renewing.