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Proverb: Love me, love my dog
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Happy Valentine’s Day!
We’ll start today with an explanation of the proverb love me, love my dog, then look at the weird and bloody origins of the celebration.
Love me, love my dog means if you love someone, you have to accept everything about them, both the good and the bad.
It’s why when people marry, they say, “…for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part…”
Before you marry, remember to say to the person, love me, love my dog or hit the road.
Now for the origins of Valentine’s Day.
We have the Romans to thank for this one.
It most likely began as the wild Roman festival of Lupercalia.
Men and women would take off their clothes (the Romans loved to get naked) then the weirdness would happen.
Goats and dogs were sacrificed and skinned.
Then, the men would beat the women with those bloody skins.
Believe it or not, the women would line up to be whipped because they thought it would make them fertile.
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Wait, it gets worse or better.
It depends on what turns your crank.
Men and women were matched by lottery.
Once matched, they would enjoy the horizontal mambo until the festival was over.
The madness continues.
In the third century, a Roman Emperor executed two men named Valentine in two different years, but on the same date – February 14th.
The Catholic church made them martyrs and designated February 14th St. Valentine’s Day.
So, that’s Valentine’s Day.
You may be beaten with a dead dog’s bloody skin, executed, or find your very own Valentine in a lottery.
It sounds like a good reason to remain single and celebrate Single Awareness Day on the 15th instead.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 73.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.