Pagan Origin of Valentine's Day!

     Why do so many believers celebrate holidays and traditions that can not be traced back to the bible but have roots in paganism? Are they not concerned that celebrating these holidays and traditions opens a door for Satan to come charging in? Valentine’s Day is coming up and I want to give a perspective from A & E and About.com about this “holiday”:

      “Some people claim that the Christian church may have decided to celebrate Valentine's feast day in the middle of February in an effort to "Christianize" celebrations of the pagan Lupercalia festival. In ancient Rome, Lupercalia, which began at the ides of February, February 15, was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.

     To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at the sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would then sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification.

     The boys then sliced the goat's hide into strips, dipped them in the sacrificial blood and took to the streets, gently slapping both women and fields of crops with the goat hide strips. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed being touched with the hides because it was believed the strips would make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would then each choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman.”

      “In 469, emperor Gelasius declared February 14th a holy day in honor of Valentinus ( a martyr) instead of the pagan god Lupercus. This allowed Christianity to take over some of the celebrations of love and fertility which had previously occurred in the context of paganism. Pagan celebrations were reworked to fit the martyr theme —

        Another aspect of Valentine's day is "Cupid." What people don't realize is that he is a demon assigned to give people heart attacks. This is why he is pictured with a bow and arrow shooting at people's hearts. This is also the reason for chocolate candy boxes shaped like a heart- all in the honor of "Cupid." People need to be careful and seek out the origin of things that they partake in.

     Valentine’s Day is no longer part of the official liturgical calendar of any Christian church; it was dropped from the Catholic calendar in 1969. It’s not a feast, a celebration, or a memorial of any martyrs. A return to more pagan-like celebrations of February 14th is not surprising — and neither is the overall commercialization of the day. Millions of people all over the world celebrate Valentine’s Day in one fashion or another, but it’s unlikely that even one of them celebrates it in an even remotely religious manner.

      The truth, though, is that American culture has so taken over Valentine’s Day that no amount of Bible verses will be able to change things. Commercial interests make so much money from Valentine’s Day that they aren’t going to accept any changes that won’t lead to even more profits. Believers helped make Valentine’s Day a cultural holiday, and now it’s entirely out of their hands.

      Today, commercialism is the biggest aspect of Valentine’s Day. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on chocolate, candies, flowers, dinners, hotel rooms, jewelry, and other gifts used to celebrate February 14th. There’s a lot of money to be made from people’s desire to commemorate the day. Only Christmas and Halloween come close in the way that modern commercialism has transformed and adopted an ancient pagan celebration.”

      So, the choice is up to you- celebrate a holiday that has pagan roots that opens the door to Satan to affect you and your family or “Come out from among them and be separate, saith the LORD  and touch not the unclean thing”(2 Cor. 6:17).