THE ORIGIN OF VALENTINE'S DAY

 

Valentine's Day dates back as far as the Stone Age but nobody ever celebrated it because everyone was too stoned.  It showed up again during the Bronze Age but, again, everyone was too busy getting tanned to notice and florists all over the world almost went out of business.  In the Middle Ages, when everyone was in their forties, different parts of the world celebrated in different ways.

At that time, February 14th wasn't known as Valentine's Day but as Porcupine's Day and a guy would give his true love a porcupine as a sign of his devotion to her.  She would then count the bristles going "He loves me, he loves me not", and if she ended on a "he loves me", she would wear the porcupine as a hat to show everyone else that, not only was she taken, but she had absolutely no fashion sense.  If, however, she ended on a "he loves me not", she would gather her entire family and force the guy to sit, naked, on the porcupine and sing "Wait 'til the sun shines, Nelly" until he lost his voice.

This painful situation continued until 1874 when a young man with laryngitis who hadn't been able to sit down for months gave his girlfriend a piece of paper which read

"Roses are red
So is my throat
Instead of a porcupine
Would you accept a goat?"     

                                                                                                                     

The young man's name was, yes, you've guessed it, Fred, and so Valentine's Day was born.  Incidentally, his girlfriend not only accepted the goat but they got married and had a bunch of kids.

So now we had a date in February called Valentine's Day on which young men would sheepishly give their girlfriends a goat.  Everything was fine for a while but, after some time, two very definite problems arose.  First, not everyone had a goat so guys would beg, borrow or steal a goat to impress their valentines and pretty soon there was a worldwide shortage of goats.  In fact, goats were so hard to come by that they became extremely expensive.  In some places a guy could spend three gadzillion dollars for a goat and imagine how he felt if he gave that to his girl and she took it and told him to get lost.  And it was as a direct result of this shortage of good goats that the Great Goat War of 1876 took place.  (We will discuss this at another time.)

The second problem was that in some countries there was a mix-up due to weather conditions.  For example, in Scotland, where it's very windy, a guy might offer his girlfriend a goat and, because of the gale force winds blowing around them, she thought he was giving her a COAT and went around telling her friends that she was going out with a guy who was buying her a mink.  Well, you can imagine what happened when he showed up with a goat.  The conversation probably went something like this:

Girl    A goat?  A GOAT?  Are you high?  What the hell am I supposed to do with a $#@!**&% goat?

Guy    But, honey, it's a tradition

Girl    TRADITION?  Tradition this, Mister!

(sound of goat being thrown out the window)

Guy    Aw, look!  You broke my goat!  That cost me three gadzillion dollars, Canadian!

Girl    Oh yeah?  Well you can take your stinking goat and you can shove it up your *&^%$#! with a @#$%*&^!! stick and I hope you AND your $%**&^@!@ goat get %%$#!@**&!!

Obviously something had to change.  And, as with all great events that shaped history, it happened in good old Ireland.  It was 11.30 pm on the 14th of February, 1892, and Paddy O'Brien-Murphy-Reilly was in a terrible state.  He had spent the whole day looking for a goat or even a coat with a tail to give to his true love, Mary Flaherty-MacNamara-O'Gilhooley, but he couldn't find one.  He was sitting under a tree with his underwear on his head when, suddenly, a leprechaun appeared and asked him what was wrong.

"Faith an' begorra, but 'tis a sad day in old Eire when a man can't lay his hands upon a bit of a goat for to win the love of his one and only", Paddy told him.  "Look", said the leprechaun, who wasn't from around those parts, "would you get to the point or we'll be here all night."  And so Paddy told the leprechaun his problem and the leprechaun laughed at him, called him an idiot, and ran off into the forest with his underwear.  Which just goes to show you that you can't trust the little buggers.

Well, Paddy looked at his watch and, noticing that it was 11.55 pm, he shrugged and headed off home feeling dejected, defeated, depressed, disappointed, distraught, and other words starting with the letter d.  Suddenly, his fairy godmother appeared and handed him a beautiful dress, a pair of glass slippers, and an invitation to a concert by Prince.  Paddy thanked her but said he'd far sooner have a goat, if she could manage it.  Well, to make a long story an epic, the fairy godmother was a little hard of hearing and she thought he said "a bouquet of flowers, a heart-shaped box of chocolates and a sentimental card", and that's what she gave him.

Paddy ran to the house of his true love and gave her his gifts and she was so delighted that they were married that very night by the leprechaun who had had a change of heart and returned with a year's supply of cotton underwear.  Inside the romantic card was a little poem which read:

"Roses are red
Violets are blue
I don't have a goat
So I hope this will do."

And the rest, as they say, is history.