I love my wife. I try very hard to be romantic. I’ve painted her pictures and written poetry and taken her to candle-lit restaurants. I am not opposed to love or romance. I’m all for love and romance. Be that as it may, I have always believed that Valentines day is a sham and a joke and a lie that should be stamped out as an affront to intelligent, thinking, reasonable people everywhere.
Let me explain. Way back in the pagan times, Italians celebrated Lupercalia February 13 through February 15. This was a festival was in honor of the She-Wolf who suckled the infant orphans, Romulus and Remus, who founded the city of Rome. Lupercalians wanted to drive off evil spirits and purify their city, producing health and fertility.
Along sometime in the 5 or 600’s AD, some Pope thought it would be a great idea to replace Lupercalia with a Christian holiday. So he came up with the “Feast of Saint Valentine. Pretty much nothing is actually known about this Valentine guy except that the Romans killed him and he was buried somewhere north of Rome on 14 February. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Saint Valentine is celebrated on 30 July.
Somehow, back in the 1400’s English writer Geoffrey Chaucer wrote some poems or something and turned Valentines Day into something that has to do with romantic love between couples.
Even though in 1929 Al Capone tried to make it about carnage by slaughtering a bunch of members of Bugsy Moran’s gang in Chicago, the romance thing stuck- even though romance has very little to do with either Christian martyrs or little Italian kids who were raised by wolves.
Of course, in the mid-twentieth century the U.S. Greeting Card Association got together and decided to cash in. Today Valentine’s is the #2 biggest card sending holiday behind Christmas. What a racket. My theory is that the greeting card industry is run by a bunch of misogynists who play on the vulnerabilities of women. They make women feel like men don’t care enough about them if they don’t get anything for Valentine’s.
Interestingly enough, women purchase 85% of all Valentine cards. Men, of course, have to fork over the dough for candy, flowers, and jewelry.
So, as I have every year since I started writing this column, I would like to offer my readers (whom I love- just not in a romantic sense) an alternative holiday; Arizona Statehood Day.
My native state, Arizona became the 48th United State on February 14, 1912, the 50th anniversary of its recognization as a Confederate Territory.
You might argue that you’re an Iowan, why celebrate the statehood of another state? Just think of all the great things Arizona has given us.
Sure, there’s the Grand Canyon and Navajo rugs. There’s Republican front-runner John McCain and the first woman Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. And don’t forget Barry Goldwater and all those John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies that were filmed there.
But Arizona has given us plenty of other things that many of us take for granted.
For example, your right to remain silent. Miranda warnings became required by the 1966 Supreme Court decision in the case of Miranda v. Arizona as a means of protecting a suspect's Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. And come on, how fun would TV crime shows be without them?
And my favorite contribution is a culinary one. Monica Flin ran “El Charro” a restaurant in Tucson. In 1922, she accidentally dropped a burro in the deep fat fryer where they made tortilla chips. She immediately began to utter a Spanish curse-word, the equivalent of the “F-bomb,” if you must know. That is she BEGAN to say it- just then her grandchildren entered the kitchen. so she changed it to “chimichanga!” Some people think that it’s the Spanish equivalent of “thingamajig,” others think it’s a combination of the naughty Spanish word and “Cowabunga.” Either way, the important thing is that the customer liked it even better that what they’d ordered.
So without Arizona’s gift to Mexican food, sour cream and guacamole would be very lonely. Which is what single people feel when no one sends them a valentine, so ease their pain and spare them the heartache. Celebrate the OTHER February 14 holiday, Arizona Statehood Day.
Click here to hear a lovely holiday song, http://objflicks.com/arizona.htm
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Ted Mallory lives in Charter Oak and teaches at Boyer Valley Schools in Dunlap. 'Ted's Column' has appeared weekly in the Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper since 2002. Don't worry, he bought his wife something for Valentines Day, even if it was reluctantly. She has put up with him for over 15 years now and buys him 'Arizona Statehood Day' cards every year.
1 comment:
My Great Aunt Nell Pollock was born in Arion Iowa 1881 and is buried
in Oakland Cemetery. She attended Iowa State teachers College, UNI, .
After graduation is move to Mountain Home Idaho from 1909 to 1913.
She then moved to Douglas Arizona. In 1968 she wrote me a letter were
she described Douglas and wrote about the ruffian Mexicans. I later
found out it was Pancho Villa she was describing. Some time after
that she took a job at a private school were she taught Barry
Goldwater. She told me of walking long distance around Phoenix, up to
5 to 10 miles a night. She also walked to the bottom and back of
the Grand Canyon in her long dress and high button heals. She some
how moved to Florida and died in 1973 but is buried in Denison.
I spent two years in Ft Huachuca for 1968 and 1969.
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