St. Valentine Vs Sts. Cyril and Methodius

St. Valentine became associated with lovers because his feast day fell on the day before the licentious Roman fertility feast of Lupercalia on Feb. 15. Lupercalia was a sort of Spring Break Week a month early. After an early-morning sacrifice of goats and dogs to Faunus, the god of merry-making, a band of young men, naked except for loincloths made from the skins of the sacrificed animals, ran along the boundaries of Rome, hitting those whom they met, especially wo...men, with strips of the skins. After that, there was quite a bit of drinking, dancing, and what is now called "hooking up." As it did with Saturnalia (now Christmas) and Halloween, the Church did not try to suppress the holiday completely, but Christianized it by discouraging the improprieties and linking it to the saint believed to have been martyred on its eve.

After the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church, embarrassed by the presence of saints on its calendar who might never have existed, booted the already shadowy St. Valentine from his Feb. 14 slot. Into his place, the Church moved saints Cyril and Methodius, two bishop-brothers who had brought Christianity to the Slavs of Eastern Europe during the ninth century. There was never any doubt as to saints Cyril's and Methodius's existence, or of their heroic virtue. The brothers braved years of political and religious persecution as they preached the Gospel. St. Methodius translated the Bible and other Christian works into Slavonic, which is still the liturgical language of many Eastern churches, and St. Cyril is credited with the invention of the Cyrillic alphabet used by Bulgarians, Russians, and Serbs. The priests saying Mass on Feb. 14 switched to white vestments in honor of the brothers' holiness.