Share one of your most romantic holidays — Valentine’s day in a delightful city.

Here comes the last month of winter comes the understanding that soon it will be warm and spring comes. Always the arrival of spring is associated with the "birth" of a new love and it is connected with the strengthening of the manifestation of libido due to the hormonal changes of male and female organisms. It is influenced by many factors: the increasing duration of daylight and warmer temperatures.

Not surprising that in pagan times the hormonal changes affected the life of people, this was manifested in their emotional sphere and poured into various holidays. One of the ancient pagan holidays devoted to love is the Lupercalia. It is a holiday dedicated to fertility and is associated with the goddess of "feverish" love Juno Februata and God Faun patron stud and who had also the nickname Luperk. The holiday was widely celebrated only in the third century BC in the Roman Empire, and was associated with high mortality and a large number of stillbirths. Which was a scourge at that time in Rome for an unknown reason. Most likely, this was due to the low hygiene of the era and lack of medicine. However, the culprits of this situation are women who, for whatever reasons, never had children or they had very little. To notify Oracle of such women should be punished bodily, but rather to flog. Despite this, many women took the punishment with gratitude, because the strokes of the whip symbolized the liberation from the curse. The holiday is also associated with the she-wolf that nursed the founders of Rome Romulus and Remus. The she-wolf in Latin Lupa, and the name of the festival of Lupercalia. Her as a gift sacrificed various animals, from the skins then produced the pests and after the feast they boys ran in Rome and rewarded residents of blows.

With the advent of Christianity, the pagan holiday was POS the ban of the Church, but it continued to celebrate.

All we love the holidays, but all of them are official and some are not. One of such holidays is Valentine's day. Well, well. What then above? As the holiday of lovers associated with ancient pagan holiday?

Turns out, there is a legend about a priest and a field doctor Valentina, who during tough times and power of the Roman Emperor Claudius II helped the Legionnaires, who were not allowed to marry while in the service of Caesar, because the only way they fully devote themselves to service for their benefit and at the thought of the ruler. Valentine was unmasked, tried and executed.

While in prison, he accidentally met the daughter of one of the guards, who fell in love and after learning his sentence was given a letter of recognition and deciding not to personally confess his feelings. Executed him on February 14, and letter his beloved was read only after his death. Church he was canonized, however, in the twentieth century decanonization.

But the celebration in secular circles continued, although the celebration ceased to be the Church.

Now this holiday is celebrated in many Catholic countries, and from the beginning of the 90s of the last century, he migrated to the former Soviet Union. The festival is so popular that it is celebrated even in Muslim countries.

the