I took a stroll to a nearby supermarket on Friday night and found a clique of people gathered outside. They were engrossed in a juicy conversation that I happened to eavesdrop on. They’re discussing the tragic events of two days back! Leila, the Ugandan girl that gifted her supposed lover a PS5 on Valentine’s day but got rejected in the most cold-blooded fashion, is whom they’re talking about. For you stone-agers that don’t know what a PS5 is, it’s a fairly expensive toy for big boys. Before we even proceed, no man in their right mind rejects something that costs in excess of $500 unless there’s a fishy backstory! Tell you what: in that position, I would’ve taken that thing, sold it the same day and gifted myself a decent set of tyres for my car, and then dealt with the consequences of my actions later.
By Friday, my nosy snout had already sniffed out some glaring inconsistencies in what should’ve been a classic vignette of mid-February drama. Café Javas which, by the way, has hosted a large number of humiliating heartbreak incidents in the previous years might soon have to be cordoned off as a crime scene! [A moment of silence for our fallen brothers in love!]
Despite the inclination I had got that this week’s episode was likely staged, I didn’t want to ruin the polarized discussion that these folks at the supermarket were having by contributing to it in any form. After all, the week didn’t seem to produce any other interesting talking points, except of course for the major setback of Ash Wednesday falling on 14th Feb! We’ll get back to this later!
For all the lovey-doveyness, the mischief and drama that comes with the month of Feb, it might be worthwhile tracing the origins of the celebration that Valentine’s is. At its most basic level, love is an intense feeling of affection. On the other end of the spectrum, it’s that overwhelming feeling of rejection that’s sure to leave your sanity hanging by a thread. If you’re watching from the sidelines, Valentine’s day is the vehicle that will take you on a grand tour across both ranges. In a place like Kampala where there’s never an end in supply of drama, it’s a safe bet you’ll always be entertained on 14th Feb without fail. But none of that started recently! Most of what you see are vestiges of customs from the past.
In ancient Rome, Lupercalia was a sacrosanct annual festival held on 15th Feb. The worshiping festival focused on remembering the dead, purification and the offering of sacrifices as a right to holiness. The rituals of the day involved the slaying of tokens of sacrifice to Lupercal—the god of health and fertility. Dogs and goats, said to have been a substitute for humans, were given up at the altar, and their blood smeared on the foreheads of worshipers. In addition to pairing men and women, or match-making if you like, part of the other activities of the day involved the whipping of women with strips of skin extracted from the sacrificial animals, as an inducement of fertility for the year ahead.
During his short-lived reign as commander-in-chief of the Roman armies, Emperor Claudius Gothicus II didn’t particularly fancy the idea of having his strong, agile front-line troops usurped by the distractions of romance back home, coupled with the uncertainties of raising young families. In his state of the empire address, he effectively banned active servicemen from marrying or having feelings!
This development left all the women in absolute shock and devastation! However, to save the day, one sneaky priest whose name was Valentine continued to wed couples covertly. When the news of this hit the wires and reached the Emperor’s desk, the priest was fetched, cuffed, and thrown into the maximum security wing of a nearby correctional facility on one of the seven hills of Rome. Unfortunately, he wasn’t granted bail as his lawyer didn’t show up to plead his client’s case. Thus, for disobeying the emperor, father Valentine quite literally lost his mind: he got beheaded! However, in the period before his execution, Valentine apparently fell in love with one of the many helplessly infatuated female well-wishers that often visited him in prison! How’s that for a bitter-sweet climax to a love story!
In a bid to do away with and sort of de-secularize the hair-raising practices of the Feast of Lupercalia, Pope Gelasius, sometime in the 400s AD, banned the festival and replaced it with something he perceived would be a little more sane and gratifying. He declared that for all his efforts to foster love, 14th February would be the day to mark the memory of Valentine. Arguably, his canonization was an unsuccessful attempt to Christianize the day. That’s pretty much how the tradition rolled out and maintains to date.
Since the day is about celebrating love, of which making love is very much an aspect of the same; it would be deceitful on your part if you didn’t think that Valentine’s and Ash Wednesday landing on the same day threw a major curveball into the whole mix. You see, in some religious circles, in addition to avoiding meat and certain other foods during lent, you’re required to abstain from sex or any form of intimacy. Imagine the sheer horror of getting tempted on Day-1 of 40, special thanks to Valentine’s! Devil was patient enough to wait forty days before daring to tempt the LORD. But for you, he even flipped his schedule! Dang! That dude’s mean!
About that creepy festival; ‘Why did you not say something on 13th?’, you ask. Let’s just say I didn’t want to be the reason for the cancellation of your Valentine’s date. While to some, love is a daily acknowledgement that shouldn’t be relegated to a single day of the calendar year—not to mention whose genesis isn’t all sunshine and rainbows; it’s doubtful that many would actually have their perception of the day altered by this nature of revelation.
So, what next after Valentine’s? Oh, well, for the rotational grazers, this is the period that you’ll browse through your directory to ascertain, perhaps guess, who the father of that creature in your tummy is! For the zero grazers, just sit back and join the world in awaiting the arrival of a few planned and, yes, a ton of unplanned kids sometime in October. The rest of us look forward to the next telenovela episode that 14th Feb ’25 shall promptly deliver.
Follow the conversation on X:
There’s a rumour i grew up hearing in church circles that father valentine had sex with his girlfriend, publicly. More like the David and his Son Absalom saga… That’s how some of us were desensitised about the celebration.
Eh! That’s a new twist!
Started out as a naked public festival, then some “christians” showed up to catch some of the action. Except this time the clothes were back on. Only in public, never in private.
😄Yep! That sounds like it, in brief!
Beautifully written, as we await the planned vs unplanned kids!
Yeh. October!😄