"For generations, Valentine's Day has ignited passion, caused fistfights, broken up marriages and led single people to ingest more tequila than Amy Winehouse and Ted Kennedy can handle.
What most people don't realize, though, is that Feb. 14 is about more than testing the memories of middle-aged married men or undermining the self-esteem of the unattached.
According to unsubstantiated gossip, a room full of middle managers, a Google search and that owl from the Tootsie Pop commercials, the true history of Valentine's Day is quite rife with romance.
You see, back in the third century, Roman Emperor Claudius II made it illegal for young men to marry because he felt they would make for better soldiers if they were single. Well, a priest by the name of Valentine thought that practice was way harsh. So he began conducting marriage ceremonies in secret – including one for Elizabeth Taylor and her second husband.
Anyway, when the emperor found out about these marriages, he jailed Valentine and issued an execution order set for Feb. 15. However, the day before the scheduled hanging – Feb. 14 – a cow in a barn next door to the jail kicked over a lamp and caught the whole city on fire. Valentine escaped and hopped around the world under assumed names for centuries before settling in Pennsylvania.
It was there that under the fictional moniker Milton Hershey he started a chocolate factory. And every year on the anniversary of his fateful escape he held a massive sale on heart-shaped boxes of candy.
But his chocolate fortune soon led to excess, and he took to drinking, often dressing in nothing more than a diaper and angel wings during parties at Jay Gatsby's house. It was at one such party that he fell in love with first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the Paris Hilton of her time.
The two carried on a torrid love affair with the help of their friends, the Hall brothers, who had invented greeting cards that could be sent in envelopes so people sorting mail – like White House interns – would not read the contents.
The relationship ended with Roosevelt's death in 1962. But touched by the epic love story, Richard Nixon made Valentine – by now the host of The Price is Right – a saint on Aug. 8, 1974.
How the folks at 1-800-Flowers got involved is still unclear..."
written by Brandon Formby
1 comment:
That's so funny! :)
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