Valentine's Day: Cupid's Annual Carnival

The birds and bees started all this folderall way back in 1476, research reports. The fable goes that on St. Valentine’s Day the birds and bees are supposed to mate.
But such reports leave me wondering. Valentine’s Day hadn’t yet been calendarized at that time and, though birds and bees are wondrously astute in birthing progeny every Spring, I have yet to see either a bird or a bee perusing a calendar to find out when it is time to mate.
Nonetheless we sheep-like homo sapiens thought this Valentines’ Day idea a good one, so have slavishly followed it since it was made into an international celebratory occasion. Being civilized, however, we made it into a festival. Womenkind wrote their names on slips of paper and the menkind drew lots to find their potential loves-of-the-moment. The men then pinned these temporary lovers’ licenses on their lapels, sort of like today’s fraternity sweetheart pins, and proceeded to treat their new-found valentine misses to gifts. Gifts of what, historians remain vague about.
In that early time, this festival lasted several days. Thus it was that the misses had a fair opportunity to work their womanly wiles, because stories have been handed down that this haphazard sporting genre actually on occasion resulted in love matches leading to marriage. Probably had something to do with the power of suggestion.
If the festival didn’t work out, the ladies still had other methods of foretelling their future mates. One of the more popular superstitions was the belief that the first man a girl glimpsed on St. Valentine’s Day was destined to be her intended. Thus, many were the misses who locked themselves in their rooms until notified by a trusted family member that the correct young man was either in her house or passing by. They didn’t even want to leave superstition to chance.
St. Val’s Day has progressed to become the third most gift-giving occasion of the year, next only to Christmas and birthdays. But on that day, a word to the wise bachelor may be sufficient. Don’t say “yes” to anything your female giftee/s may say or ask - before you analyze it. Ladies have ways of phrasing things so they sound soft and safe, like whipped cream on jello.
If you do get caught making promises you never intended, don’t worry unnecessarily. Valentines, so far, won’t hold up in court. And there are still ships sailing to the South Seas where Polynesian custom requires the woman to always take the initiative in matters of the heart.
Imagine a place where the men have to fight for a Leap Year in order to get a say in such matters -- just women fighting over you all the time!
What a way to die--not being able to satisfy them all. Right?