Colm O'Regan: For the love of God, it’s Valentine’s Day again

Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Picture Denis Minihane.

ST Valentine’s Day — also known as "THIS week? I Thought It Was The Week After".

The origins of Valentine himself are still vague. There were a few Valentines knocking around the Greater Roman area 1,800 years ago. 

The best guess is that St Valentine was a Roman bishop who clashed with the Emperor Aurelian. The emperor had ordered that young men remain unmarried. 

He believed single men made better warriors. Maybe they weren’t taking time off mid-pillage to read letters from home.

Valentine performed secret weddings for Aurelian’s soldiers and for this he was punished with death. 

Perhaps betrayed by a girlfriend disappointed to receive an obviously last-minute greeting-mosaic with the price-tag from the chariot-stables still attached. 

There were other martyrs named Valentine, but they appear to have been friend-zoned by history. 

In the fifth century, Pope Gelasius made Valentine’s Day a feast day to divert attention from the pagan feast of Lupercalia. 

Lupercalia was the kind of feast the Romans did well — highly organised debauchery. 

Nude noblemen ran through the streets striking people they met with hairy thongs made from the bloodied skins of sacrificed dogs and goats. 

Women would purposely get in the way as it was believed that a slap of a hairy thong improved their fertility. (Yerrah, it could do no harm, I s'pose). 

This tradition lives on now in the Late Late Show Valentine’s Special.

Apart from events with a sacrificial hairy thong theme, the names of all the local eligible women were put into an urn. 

Then they were drawn out to pair off with the men for the year. A kind of racy GAA football championship draw, if you will.

This was too much fun for early Christianity and its campaign to be “tough on craic, tough on the causes of craic”. 

Bishops ordered that the names of local girls be replaced with saints, so that the men could, instead, choose their favourite saint to pray to. Roman lads carved “Oh great!” and sarcastic emojis in response.

Valentine’s Day is still important. For some, it affords the time to reconnect with their special person over a nice meal in a restaurant. 

For others, it’s a time to stand at the window of restaurants, making lewd gestures at the couples inside.

The cornerstone of Valentine’s Day is the card. 

If you’ve just started going out with someone — say you started around Christmas — Valentine’s Day coincides with that particularly awkward time where you’re not sure of the status of the relationship. 

Valentine’s Day can put pressure on. You mightn’t have mentioned the L-word — Love, or even Like. 

Depending on how the relationship is proceeding, you may have mentioned the other L-word: Lidl –—where you trust someone enough to excitedly explain how you just bought a new electric drill and you’d “only gone in there for milk”.

It can be hard to find a card that doesn’t have the L-word written on it. What is needed is a Valentine’s message which expresses their undoubted affection without getting carried away. Something like: "Roses are red/Violets are blue, My friends think you’re sound/So I do too".

As time goes on, couples may become distracted by other petty concerns. 

For this, a card should express both the tenderness and the turmoil in their lives: "Roses are red/Violets are blue, Your turn to change their nappy, I think it’s a poo".

Valentine didn’t have just one thing on his mind. He also has responsibility for bees and plague. 

So if you were with someone that you told to buzz off and they’ve been plaguing you ever since, seems like Valentine’s your man.