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See what Zahra Buhari wrote about celebrating Valentine’s day

Published

7 years ago

February 14, 2018

President Buhari’s first daughter, Zahra Buhari Muhammadu Buhari, has spoken out on her thought about celebrating Valentine’s day .

The young woman who is now married to Ahmed Indimi, was actively involved in campaigning for her father in 2015 as she took serious part in major national discourse on social media.

According to Zahra Buhari Indimi, love should not be celebrated on just a single day, it should be celebrated every day by lovers to show appreciation to each other and she also believes that Valentine’s day should not be forced on anyone. Whosoever wishes not to celebrate should be left alone and others that consider it a day to celebrate should also be allowed to do so.

Check out her post below:

Valentine’s Day is a time to celebrate romance and love and kissy-face fealty. But according to some believe, the origins of this festival of candy and cupids are actually dark, bloody — and a bit muddled.

According to a publication by National Public Radio :

Though no one has pinpointed the exact origin of the holiday, one good place to start is ancient Rome, where men hit on women by, well, hitting them.

From February 13 to 15, the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia. The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain.

The Roman romantics “were drunk. They were naked,” says Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them, Lenski says.

They believed this would make them fertile.

The brutal fete included a matchmaking lottery, in which young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then be, um, coupled up for the duration of the festival — or longer, if the match was right.

The ancient Romans may also be responsible for the name of our modern day of love. Emperor Claudius II executed two men — both named Valentine — on February 14 of different years in the 3rd century A.D. Their martyrdom was honored by the Catholic Church with the celebration of St. Valentine’s Day.

Later, Pope Gelasius I muddled things in the Fifth Century by combining St. Valentine’s Day with Lupercalia to expel the pagan rituals. But the festival was more of a theatrical interpretation of what it had once been.

Lenski adds, “It was a little more of a drunken revel, but the Christians put clothes back on it. That didn’t stop it from being a day of fertility and love.”

Around the same time, the Normans celebrated Galatin’s Day. Galatin meant “lover of women.” That was likely confused with St. Valentine’s Day at some point, in part because they sound alike.

As the years went on, the holiday grew sweeter. Chaucer and Shakespeare romanticized it in their work, and it gained popularity throughout Britain and the rest of Europe. Handmade paper cards became the tokens-du-jour in the Middle Ages.

Eventually, the tradition made its way to the New World. The industrial revolution ushered in factory-made cards in the 19th century.

And in 1913, Hallmark Cards of Kansas City, Missouri, began mass producing valentines. February has not been the same since.

In all valentine’s day is simply a day set aside to share and experience love with the ones you cherish