Valentine lotto
“Forget about love…” I thought I heard the lady whisper to me, “…there are millions of other ways your heart could beat faster this Valentine season!” I glanced around to make sure my wife was nowhere in sight and came closer. I peered behind the glass window where the lady sat and saw the approximately 200 million other things she was referring to. Powerless to resist, I gave in to the temptation and paid her.
Now before you think that I’m a scoundrel, I did not engage the services of someone from the world’s oldest profession! Rather, I simply decided to contribute a few pesos to the many worthwhile projects of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO). The 200 million peso Super Lotto Valentine’s Jackpot was only incidental. Besides, I was told that the voting process in the upcoming automated elections is very similar to filling up a lotto card. So you could say that I also decided to buy a ticket for the sake of (ahem) practice. Of course, I knew that the probability of my winning the lotto was only 1 in 13,983,816 or 0.000007% (which perhaps also matches the odds of us choosing the best leaders on May 10). But I reasoned that those numbers were still better than the estimated 1 in 46,000,000 chance that “radioactive monkeys will kidnap Britney Spears and convert her to Buddhism!” Needless to say, I didn’t win. Some lucky dude from Luzon got it on a “lucky pick” and probably spent the entire Valentine’s Day (with apologies to Elizabeth Browning) busily “counting the ways.”
Interestingly, the Valentine’s Day we know today may have pagan roots that one might say involved a form of lottery as well. Before I get into that, however, I think it is significant to note that February 14 is actually the feast day of a real saint, Saint Valentine. While there are at least three early Christian saints by the name of Valentine, many believe that the patron saint of lovers was a kind priest who lived in Rome during the reign of Emperor Claudius II in the third century. The story goes that Claudius banned marriages for young men since he believed it made them weak soldiers. It was a very unpopular decree, but few were brave enough to go against the emperor’s wishes. Valentine, however, defied the emperor and secretly performed the sacrament of matrimony for many young lovers. Valentine’s clandestine marriage ceremonies were eventually discovered and he was arrested. Claudius reportedly then asked Valentine to disown Christianity, but Valentine turned the tables on him and tried instead to convert the emperor. Furious, Claudius ordered his brutal execution. He was reported to have been beaten with clubs until dead and then beheaded on February 14, 270 AD. Legend also has it that during his imprisonment, Valentine miraculously healed the daughter of one of his jailors. Valentine and the girl developed a strong bond and as his execution neared, she became grief- stricken. It is alleged that just before his martyrdom, Valentine wrote her a farewell letter, which he signed with the now immortal greeting card phrase “From Your Valentine.”
Ironically, Rome soon became the center of Christianity in the world. As in many cultures, however, some of its pagan practices continued. One of these was the Lupercalia festival, which the Romans traditionally celebrated on February 15. It was a spring festival for health and fertility. One of the events at the end of the day was a sort of “romantic lottery.” The names of all the single ladies were placed in a big urn. The young bachelors then picked out a name from the urn and became paired with the lucky (or unlucky) maidens for the duration of the festival. In some cases, the couples ended up marrying each other. If the super lotto card system was already available then for their unique kind of sweepstakes, I can already guess the “winning” numbers the boys would have shaded — “36-24-36!”
As expected, however, the church did not look too kindly at the practice of raffling off prospective brides. And so, in 496 AD, they tried to turn the festival into a Christian feast day in honor of Saint Valentine. Its observance was set a day earlier, on February 14. They also tried to change the Lupercalian lottery system. Instead of picking the name of your prospective lover from a box, you would instead pull out the name of a saint that you were to study and emulate for the coming year. Needless to say, the romantic elements of the Lupercalia festival were far too powerful to suppress and the “saint lottery” never caught on. Besides, even the very legend of Saint Valentine may have inadvertently worked against the church’s intentions. The festival’s stature as a day of romance spread to other parts of Europe and it was further cemented during the Middle Ages when people in France and England came to widely believe that February 14 was the beginning of the birds’ mating season. Eventually, the Catholic Church gave up on the idea of a saint lottery. And although Saint Valentine remains in the church’s official list of saints, the commemoration of his feast day was removed from the General Calendar for universal liturgical veneration in 1969. Valentine’s Day is therefore now largely celebrated as a secular holiday and few Catholic churches, if at all any, observe the feast of St. Valentine on February 14.
I don’t know what we can do to remember Saint Valentine more than we do today, but the holy priest surely deserves it. After all, despite his fame in marrying lovers in secret, Valentine was canonized for choosing to suffer a horrible death rather than renounce his faith. At the same time, I think that the ancient Romans also had a point in suggesting that relationships can sometimes be like a lottery. But perhaps Saint Valentine would also add, as I like to imagine he told some of those frightened couples he secretly wed, that marriage and raising kids may be the ultimate gambles that we take in this life. And if there is something that we need to put everything on the line for, to bet everything that we have on, it is love.
* * *
Please e-mail your reactions to kindergartendad@yahoo.com.
