LOVE IS IN THE SWAZILAND AIR

Love is in the air, according to the Times of Swaziland as it introduced an eight page Valentine’s Day supplement stuffed full of advertising on Tuesday (12 February 2008).

I don’t know if love is really in the air but a lot of people are definitively hoping that cash will be in the tills as the newspaper’s advertisers encouraged people to part with their hard earned money at restaurants, holiday destinations, beauty salons and (I don’t really get the connection here) used car lots.

Swazis keep going on about their culture and how superior it is to more developed countries so it comes as a huge surprise that every year come 14 February the old pagan custom of St Valentine’s is celebrated in the kingdom.

Of course, ordinary people don’t celebrate since about 70 percent of Swaziland’s near one million population live in abject poverty on an income of less than one US dollar a day (E7). – and advertisers aren’t interested in them because they’ve got no money to spend.

But the Times, a newspaper that doesn’t really care about ordinary Swazis, indulged its fantasy view of what Swaziland is like with gushing praise for this fancy restaurant and that romantic hotel. Each gush was accompanied by a paid-for advert.

But what exactly does the Times think are we celebrating on St Valentine’s Day? The Times believes it’s all about a man who in 269 AD was martyred because he refused to give up Christianity.

Not so, according to modern thinking.

Valentine’s Days has no relation to Saints. The Encyclopedia Britannica has St Valentine's Day as a lovers’ festival and the modern tradition of sending valentine cards has no relation to the saints but, rather seems to be connected either with the Roman fertility festival of Lupercus or with the mating season of birds.

This information is reiterated by the Encyclopedia Americana where the customs of Valentine’s Day have been handed down from the Roman festival of the Lupercalia, celebrated in the month of February, when the names of young women were put into a box and drawn out by men as chance directed. This is the origin of Valentine’s Day cards linking men and women together for sexual purposes.

My personal favourite explanation comes from Metro Magazine.

Metro says it all began with two ill-fated Romans - both named Valentine - who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, got executed and became Christian martyrs. The two Valentines lived in third-century Rome as out-of-the-closet Christians, sharing not only a name, but a death date – 14 February. Their cult was grafted onto the very popular Lupercalia festivities held every 15 February. During the pagan celebration, scantily clad young men called Luperci would run around town, sacrificing goats and playfully whipping women with goatskin thongs. Romans thought this behaviour would increase fertility, and no doubt it did.

So, Times of Swaziland, if you must celebrate St Valentine’s do it properly. Bring on the women, the scantily clad men …. And don’t forget the goatskin thongs.