Shit, I missed it.

No, not Valentine’s Day itself, but the War On St. Valentine’s Day.

It seems that CYA  (Catholic Youths Abstaining) wants to put the "Saint" back in St. Valentine’s Day, arguing that the holiday is being besmirched by oversexualization and commercialization.

Pictured here, courtesy of The Stranger, is a massive CYA Seattle demonstration in which four CYA soldiers hold up signs that are pretty big and took them a couple of hours to make in their parents’ basements.

From the CYA website:

Valentine’s Day has become a day when merchants order people to give candy, cards and flowers to people they lust after.

Yeah.  I hate it when merchants order you to buy stuff, because . . . how can you say "no" to a merchant?  Why, just the other day, this Hallmark lady grabbed me as I walked through the mall and forced me to buy a Whitman’s sampler!

It is celebrated in our schools, and even children in pre-schools are encouraged to exchange valentines.

Those bastards!

But the real Valentine’s Day is not about cards, candy, flowers, and our romantic love for each other, but about God’s love and the martydom of a Catholic saint.

Listen, you Catholic Youths Abstaining!  I applaud your decision to abstain from sex.  Goody for you.  But the rest of the us live in the real world.  Can you imagine what would happen to me if I went through life telling my girlfriends that the real Valentine’s Day isn’t about cards, flowers or our romantic love for each other?  Why, I would end up being 43 years old and unmarried!

Why don’t most people know this? Because we’ve been leaving the saint out of Saint Valentine’s Day.

Exactly!  And when people call me by my first and last name, and leave off the "Mister", they don’t know that I’m a guy!

Secularists and merchants who make money off Saint Valentine’s Day want you to believe this day has nothing to do with Christianity. The same people who want us to wish each other “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” want us to buy “Valentines Day” cards and gifts, and not “Saint Valentine’s Day” cards and gifts.

So, um, edible underwear is out, right?

Secularists and commercial exploiters have succeeded into turning Saint Valentine’s Day into a holiday where Saint Valentine and Jesus Christ are never mentioned.

Sadly, there never was a Saint Valentine’s Day in which St. Valentine and Jesus Christ was mentioned. 

You see, each year on February 15, Roman priests gathered on Palantine Hill at the cave of Lupercal. Vestal virgins brought sacred cakes made from the first ears of last year’s grain harvest to the fig tree. Two naked young men, assisted by the Vestals, sacrificed a dog and a goat at the site. The blood was smeared on the foreheads of the young men and then wiped away with wool dipped in milk.

The youths then donned loincloths made from the skin of the goat and led groups of priests around the pomarium, the sacred boundary of the ancient city, and around the base of the hills of Rome. The occasion was happy and festive. As they ran about the city, the young men lightly struck women along the way with strips of the goat hide. It is from these implements of purification, or februa, that the month of February gets its name. This act supposedly provided purification from curses, bad luck, and infertility.

This was all very very B.C.  The actual exploiters were the Christians who came along centuries later and toned down the holiday, making it about romance rather than eroticism.

So if you want to go back to the original celebration of what became St. Valentine’s Day, that’s fine.  Start whapping women with your loincloths, guys.  But I don’t think the CYA will care for that very much.

Instead this is a day when we celebrate lust and even encourage children to take part.

No, actually, we DON’T encourage children to celebrate lust.  You’re thinking of Saint Pedophile’s day.  That’s in April, I think.

But we live in a Christian culture and there is more than one Christian holiday on our calendar.

Halloween?

Just as all Christians demand that we remember that Jesus Christ is the reason we celebrate Christmas, Catholics demand that we remember that February 14 is Saint Valentine’s Day.

Or, at least, the handful of Catholic kids at CYA with too much time on their hands.

What can you do? Don’t buy cards that leave off the Saint. Don’t buy Valentines chocolates that leave off the Saint. And don’t shop at stores that leave off the Saint.

Killjoys.

But the CYA website does inform us that the real "Saint Valentine was sentenced to death for his LOVE OF GOD but cured his jailor’s daughter of blindness before the emperor had his head cut off."

So, apparently, the proper way to celebrate Saint Valentine’s Day is to WRITE IN ALL CAPS, cure blindness, and cut people’s heads off.

Sorry, honey.  No flowers for you.

Looks like St. Patrick’s Day is going to be a real barnburner with these people, too.