You probably know Valentine Day is the Christian “embrace and extend” for yet-another pre-Christian tradition, Lupercalia, but what about Lupercalia?

Like all the animals, humans have a time of the year when they are excessively horny and this appears to be (dunno what are the natural cause) at the end of the winter-start of the spring, when the weather start to become better. In the Mediterranean region (Italy/Roman Empire) this happens to be in the middle of February, just around Lupercalia and Valentine Day. So the people are horny, give each other chocolate and then “get busy” :”>

I live a bit North from Mediterranean, the climate here is colder, that time of the year comes a couple of weeks later and is called Dragobete (really, read this, is insightful) and is pretty much the same thing as Valentine Day plus more local traditions… well, even if that time of the year was earlier, we don’t have the St. Valentin holiday in the calendar, that’s only in the Catholic calendar, not also in the Orthodox one :D

…but I’ll take the chocolate anyway.