This ‘Wednesday’ is taking Valentine’s Day back to its roots

Like most secular holidays, Feb. 14 is a commercialization of a Christian feast day, that of Valentine, the patron saint of epilepsy, beekeepers and love. And like most Christian observations, it is an adaptation of a more debaucherous pagan holiday.

Lupercalia was a festival celebrating the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus. In the second month of the year, the priests of Lupercali sacrificed a goat and a dog and cut them into strips. They soaked those strips in blood and went around town slapping virgins with them to increase their fertility.

When Constantine Christianized the empire, the only way to sell the new religion was to rebrand the old feast days. Saturnalia became Christmas and Easter replaced the Festival of Venus. That left Lupercalia, so Pope Gelasius looked around for a good martyr.

There were two or three guys named Valentine who had lived in Rome, and not one, apparently, was in good graces with previous emperors. They were also executed, supposedly and coincidentally, on Feb. 14. One of these Valentines was a priest in 3rd century Rome. The story goes that Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than married ones, so he forbade weddings in his legions. But Valentine conducted marriages in secret and for that he was beheaded. Thus, this tale says, a festival of fecundity became a feast of marriage.

Which brings me to 1966. Mrs. Esposito taught the third-grade class at St. Anthony of Padua in South Ozone Park. The second grade and fourth grade were both taught by nuns, members of an order Brother X referred to as the Little Sisters of the Gestapo.

It had been a rough year. There were 47 students in our class, and I’d been a pariah since December.

The eve of Christmas Eve, Mrs. Esposito conducted a spelling bee of boys against the girls. The prize was that the winning gender got no homework over the 10-day holiday vacation. On the eighth round, with every other boy gone, and three girls left, Mrs. Esposito looked me dead in the eye and said, “Spell Wednesday.”

At dinner that night, my father explained: “The first D is silent, like the P in ocean bathing.” But by then the damage had been done. It was a very long January, with every boy in the class blaming me that they had to copy over the Baltimore Catechism.

Still every winter has a spring, and that was true even in that large classroom on Rockaway Boulevard.

The Irish parish to our north, St. Clement, celebrated St. Brigid’s Day in early February, but we had St. Blaise. Father Fusco crossed two candles at our necks to bless our throats. Immediately after, Mrs. Esposito handed each student 46 pieces of construction paper. She explained that we would make a valentine for each of our classmates, with no exceptions. Did not matter sex. Did not matter race. Did not matter creed (although everyone in St. Anthony’s was Catholic). This meant that Joanne Stallone, the coolest girl, still had to draw hearts out for Elizabeth, the only Black girl in the class, and the boy Elizabeth sat next to, the nerd who couldn’t spell Wednesday.

Joanne had the 64color Crayola box, so she used the gold- and copper-colored crayons that we did not get in our eight-packs. But Elizabeth and I worked as a team. She cut hearts out of notebook paper, and we stapled them on the construction paper. I drew cherubs on each. Furthermore, my mother, Nurse

Vivian, sent me in with four dozen chocolate cupcakes. The boys forgave me, though I was called “Wednesday” the rest of the year.

In 1969, the church removed St. Valentine’s Day from its calendar, but for Hallmark and FTD, it was a moneymaker, so it still gets celebrated.

And me? I don’t color in construction and notebook paper anymore. My love letter instead is this column, written to a man I love in a city I love. This is our 39th Valentine’s Day together, and although we don’t celebrate the fertility business, we do celebrate the romance.

For two decades now we’ve taken our sons out to dinner with us. But this year, both sons have their own sweethearts, so we parents can celebrate on our own.

Thus, Brian and I are going back to the roots of the festival. As you read this column, we are flying to the Eternal City to honor a marriage that until 2008 had been just as illegal as those conducted by Valentine.

Whether your joy this week be secular, Christian or pagan, may your Valentine’s Day be filled with goat pelts.

Kevin Fisher-Paulson’s book, “Secrets of the Blue Bungalow” (Fearless Books, $25), is available at fearlessbooks.com and area bookstores.