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This is really unromantic.

Two AIFDKNYK‘s in a week, a snow day miracle! Don’t worry, Hipster Friday is still coming at you later this afternoon, but now we’re going to blow your minds by explaining the origins of Valentine’s Day.

Like most of our holidays Valentine’s Day has it’s origins in a pagan festival. In this case the festival the Roman festival of Lupercalia that was originally held on February 15th. Lupercalia was a festival celebrating health and fertility. The festival was held on the Palantine Hills of Rome in the Lupercal where the alleged founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, were suckled by a she-wolf as babies.

Celebrations for Lupercalia included sacrificing two goats and a dog and then smearing the blood all over two male youths who then wore the goatskins as loincloths. After then feasting, the men would run around and strike people with their loincloths. It was supposed to increase a lady’s fertility if she got struck so they’d line up for their beatings.

The festival then expanded as the Roman Empire expanded and was held in other locations like France and Britain. They adapted some of the festivities and then added another one where there was a lottery where available ladies names were put in a basket and drawn by the available men. During the festival each couple could get it on, or possibly longer.

Naturally, the Christians were buzz kills and did not like any of this business so they decided to make a Saint, in this case Valentine, the patron Saint of lovers and have a different celebration around the same time. They kept the lottery aspect, but instead of drawing the name of a lovely lady, you drew the name of a Saint who you had to study and try to emulate for the next year.

The Saint thing was clearly way lamer than Lupercalia so it only lasted a few hundred years. The Catholic Church then decided to institute the lovers lottery again, except more chaste. Instead of being able to get it on during the festival the man was supposed to be “chivalrous” and be bound to his “Valentine” for the year and defend her, blah, blah, etc. Fast forward and now you have our modern day Valentine’s Day.

This is the God the the Babylonians were honoring - Marduk!

The first decade of the 21st Century is rapidly coming to an end and 2010 is almost upon us. To celebrate the coming of the new year, many people draw up a list of resolutions for the coming year. A new year, a new beginning, right? Instead of instigating changes in ones personal life when one thinks it needs to happen, it’s much easier to pick an arbitrary date on the calendar (January 1st) and make a resolution to change. This has been the case for thousands of years.

New Year’s day celebrations began 4000 years ago in Babylon. Instead of celebrating New Year’s on January 1st like Western civilization does, they celebrated the first of the year at the first new moon after the Vernal Equinox equivalent to around March or April using our calendar. They celebrated New Year’s with an 11-day festival named Akitu. During those 11 days they partied hard and honored their gods. While partying, Babylonians also made resolutions, the most common being to return a piece of property back to someone they borrowed it from.

People celebrated New Year’s in March until 153BCE when the Romans moved the beginning of the calendar to January. January is named after the Roman God Janus who looked forward and backward through time. As part of their New Years celebrations, the Romans would exchange gifts and make resolutions about the coming year in honor Janus. Usually these resolutions involved forgiving enemies for wrongs committed the year before.

So after a couple a thousand years we may not party as hard as the Babylonians or the Romans, but we still have New Year’s resolutions. Don’t forget that if you’re thinking of not having a resolution this year, you would be ignoring 4,000 years of beautiful tradition.

This totally gets us in the mood.

Continuing our “And if you don’t know” holiday series about plants related to Christmas, we’re going to talk about mistletoe. If you didn’t know, it is a Christmas tradition that if two people are underneath mistletoe they are supposed to kiss. What that has to do with the birth of Christ, we’re not sure, but we’re all about the holiday season and we’re all about any excuse to make-out.

Like a lot of Christmas tradition, the mistletoe has its roots in paganism. Scandinavians, Romans and Druids all held the plant in high regard.

Druids thought that the mistletoe had mystical powers and was a symbol of immortality because of its ability to grow off the ground and stay green year round. The Druids had a special ceremony where they would cut down the bough of mistletoe with a golden sickle five days after the first New Moon after the Solstice. The bough of mistletoe wasn’t allowed to touch the ground or else it would lose it’s magical powers. After the mistletoe was cut down it was distributed by the Druid priests to the people to hang over their doorways to ward off evil spirits. Druids would also use the berries to kill people during human sacrifices. How this jived with immortality is unclear.

Loki talking Hoder into shooting his brother. What a dick.

In Scandinavia, mistletoe was believed to be a plant of peace. If two enemies encountered each other under mistletoe they had to put down their arms and kiss and make-up. This came from the Norse myth about Baldr, a god of vegetation. When Baldr was born his mother Frigga went around the world making all the plants, animals and inanimate objects promise not to hurt Baldr. Apparently she forgot to ask mistletoe because the god Loki figured out a loophole and told this other god Hoder (Baldr’s brother) to make an arrow out of the mistletoe. Hoder was fighting with Baldr over this goddess Nanna they both wanted to bone so he decided to kill Baldr with the mistletoe arrow. Baldr’s death caused there to be winter all the time until the rest of the gods decided to resurrect him so it wouldn’t be winter all the time. Frigga then declared the mistletoe sacred and decreed that two people passing underneath the mistletoe must kiss to celebrate Baldr’s return to life. Makes sense.

Romans also dug mistletoe, they used it during Saturnalia. The Roman feast of Saturn, aka Saturnalia, was held in late December and celebrated Saturn (duh). It was basically a huge orgy where they would drink, eat, give gifts and bone a lot to honor Saturn (Think Studio 54 in it’s heyday). This is clearly superior to Christmas. One of the ways they would honor and celebrate Saturn, who apparently was a pervert/awesome, was by performing fertility rituals (translation: orgies) underneath mistletoe.

Combine all of these traditions together and voila you have the custom of smooching underneath the mistletoe around Christmas.

Happy Hipster Friday! This is the last Hipster Friday of 2009, we’ll keep updating the rest of the holidays, but we take off for Christmas and New Years because we’re lazy.

Hipsters celebrate the Holiday’s just like everyone else. While Becky and Chad are out at fancy cocktail parties, hipsters have their own types of parties to celebrate the season. To have your very own hipster holiday party follow the steps below.

1) Choose what holiday you’re celebrating.

While a lot of hipsters choose to have a Christmas, Hanukkah or general holiday party, others choose to go the pop culture route in an attempt to be witty and relevant. Most often this will will result in having either a Festivus or Chrismukkah . Festivus is a holiday copped from Seinfeld and Chrismukkah is a holiday copped from The O.C.. While both were awesome shows, and they’re both interesting holiday ideas, both shows only live on in syndication and have been off the air since 1998 and 2007 respectively.

2) Decorate properly.

If a hipster is doing a Christmas or Hanukkah themed party the decorations will be minimal at best. Perhaps a sad looking Charlie Brown Tree or an electric Menorah will make an appearance. If you’re doing a Chrismukkah party, BOTH a sad looking Charlie Brown Tree and an electric Menorah are necessary.

Festivus is a little trickier since you need the traditional aluminum Festivus poll. Any other piece of Seinfeld paraphernalia will also work for decoration.

Entire neighborhoods get in on this action. Ex. Adams Morgan in D.C.

3) Choose a gimmick to force your guests to participate in.

Party time!

No hipster holiday party is complete without the completely unnecessary gimmick. Some parties require you to wearan ugly sweater, you know because there are a lot of ugly holiday sweaters out there. This is an attempt to mock the sartorial choices of others. If you hate your friends, we suggest going this route.

If it’s a Festivus party hosts will often make the guests air their grievances, just like Seinfeld. this can get a little hairy amongst friends/frenemies, especially with the booze flowing. Feats of strength could also be attempted if the booze/nose candy is involved.

Christmastime is full of many strange customs: gingerbread houses, Black Friday, stuffing your face with delicious cookies, etc. One of the stranger customs we can think of is putting up a Christmas tree. On face it doesn’t seem that strange, but that’s because it’s so normalized in our culture. Think about it, who thought to themselves, “what better way to celebrate the birth of Christ than with a dead evergreen tree?”

The History of the Christmas Tree
Oddly enough there aren’t any mentions of an evergreen tree being present at the birth of Christ (unlike reports of lobsters). Like many Christian traditions, the Christmas tree may have its roots in pagan rituals. Many ancient societies in the Northern hemisphere would celebrate the Winter Solstice by decorating their homes with evergreen boughs or, in the case of the Egyptians, green palm leaves.

The modern version of the Christmas tree is said to have developed in Germany around the 16th or 17th centuries and spread throughout Europe. In the early 1800′s, German immigrants brought the tradition of the Christmas Tree to the United States. Puritans in the U.S. were a huge buzzkill and didn’t approve of any sort of celebration of Christmas so Christmas trees didn’t become prevalent in the U.S. until the late 19th/early 20th century.

The Environmental Effects of Christmas Trees
While we like cutting down trees (we will admit we love the smell of evergreen trees), there are  environmental issues surrounding the cultivation of Christmas trees.

In the early 20th Century over harvesting of evergreen trees for Christmas was such a problem in the U.S. that even President Theodore Roosevelt tried to discourage people from having Christmas trees out of fear of decimating forests. Instead of eliminating the custom, conservationists came up with the idea of the tree farm.

Now Christmas trees are grown on large farms where producers either cut down the trees themselves and ship them to Christmas tree retailers or allow consumers to come and pick out their own tree on the farm. Like many agricultural products in the U.S., Christmas trees are grown on giant farms that use lots of pesticides that can cause environmental damage due to runoff. Real Christmas trees can also overwhelm municipality trash services that aren’t prepared to turn the trees into mulch.

Safety Risks
Christmas trees are highly flammable. It is important to make sure the tree is well watered so that they needles don’t become dry. Also, make sure to always unplug any electric lights hanging on the real tree when not in use to further decrease the risk of fire.

Alternatives to Dead Trees
If you’re still into the whole tradition, there are a few alternatives to the dead evergreen tree. You can also go with a plastic tree and reuse it year after year. You can also be super eco-friendly and get a small potted evergreen tree, shrub or even rosemary bush if you want to go wild.