which valentine are we following here??


while i was hanging in la, being the coolest of cool that i normally am, something caught my eye. a copy of la brea living. the cover pictured an exotic car coupled with a headline promising more on the inside. the 15 page magazine had 2 pages dedicated to the exotic cars. disappointed i flipped through the local mag in search of something else of interest. a simple turn of the page left me staring at a page with 3 short paragraphs, a small title, and a hot brunette wearing a red satin strapless dress, kneeling down. in her hands- a heart shaped box with a white bow. my attention was captive. “who invented valentines day?” was the title.

article summary:
stats: over 1 billion cards sent every vday. 85% purchased by women. there were 3 saints named valentine, all 3 were martyred. the most famed one was imprisoned for teaching christianity in opposition to the roman gods. while in prison he healed a jailers blind daughter. to celebrate this, he sent her a letter the day before his execution (beheaded) which took place on feb. 14th. he signed the letter “from your valentine”. (if you think that’s a crock, it gets even better… ) romans used to draw names from a hat, guys choose girls names. the person you pick is your lover for the rest of the year. this took place in feb as well.

fast forward to 2005 and what do we do? we send cards, go to overpriced meals, and buy chocolates.

did anyone ponder that saint valentine sent a letter to a girl who was just healed from being blind? let’s just believe for a sec that he could give a blind person sight from the inside of his jail cell. how the hell could she read the letter!?

why did we keep the tradition of sending cards as opposed to the chauvinistic picking of names out of hats? everyone would at least have had a valentine then.

i’ve decided that holidays start anywhere, thus i’m starting my own. first, to find an event in history which i feel is significant and mutate a tradition out of it. in the following years the tradition will catch and soon there will be school days off, songs, fictional characters, irrelevant traditions and stories that are somewhat related to the event, and of course billions of billions of dollars spent each year by people celebrating the tradition. the goal here is to be a company who banks on such a tradition.

the holiday i have chosen to create will be a christian holiday. the specific event i have in mind is the time that jesus feeds the masses. the story where jesus feeds a few thousand people with a couple loafs of bread and two fish. if we have a holiday that celebrates the letter from a jail cell then we better have a week long holiday for the day jesus made food out of thin air! we could couple this with the time jesus made water into wine. i can see the holiday now...

show up to someone’s house with a few bottles of water. they tell you they have nothing but bread and fish to eat. so they put out some crackers and smoked salmon… everyone sits down to eat and you offer everyone some water. when all of a sudden, the host for the evening takes the water, goes to the kitchen, and comes back with wine! the host then takes the crackers and smoked salmon back into the kitchen to come out with a rack of lamb or some bbq spare ribs. the holiday would be a day to eat a ton, but pretend it came out of thin air. then there’d be some sort of gift exchange, we’d have an animal (the ‘masses snail’ has my vote) that magically makes everyone happy and flies around in the sky delivering happiness in monetary form to everyone and their loved ones.

of course then, anti-people such as me would be rise up against masses day. accusing companies and money as the basis for such a holiday. we are celebrating a miracle here. but maybe the reason this event (feeds the masses) was blown out of proportion, it could be a complete farce. however, it comes 360 back to some dude in jail that wrote a letter to a little girl.