Valentine's Day/Rome's Founding Day - Lupercalia

Over the past few years, I have awakened a side of actuality that has never been there before. Everything I encounter I find myself researching and understanding almost everything on a much deeper and tactile level. Happenstance that each time I research American holidays, I find some Pagan source of sky watchers or Gods. Apparently the Pagans founded the USA and have brought all of their traditions and holidays with them disguised as holy days. For my Valentine’s Day post, I was going to whine about not having the reciprocating love that I have always aspired. That woulda been wack. Wackety-Wack. So to scratch my research-loving historian's itch (that resides deep within) I will cover...(#Drumroll)...Lupercalia! (Read: Valentine's Day) Lupercalia was a very ancient, possibly pre-Roman pastoral festival, observed on February 13 through 15, the day Rome was founded (traditionally, 753 B.C.), to avert evil spirits and purify the city Rome, releasing health and fertility. Lupercalia subsumed Februa, an earlier-origin spring cleansing ritual held on the same date, which gives the month of February (Februarius) its name. Many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy. Romulus and Remus are the twin brothers and central characters of Rome's foundation myth. Their mother is Rhea Silvia, daughter to Numitor, king of Alba Longa. Before their conception, Numitor's brother Amulius seizes power, kills Numitor's male heirs and forces Rhea Silvia to become a Vestal Virgin, sworn to chastity. Rhea Silvia conceives the twins by the god Mars, or by the demi-god Hercules; once the twins are born, Amulius has them abandoned to die in the river Tiber. They are saved by a series of miraculous interventions: the river carries them to safety, a she-wolf (in Latin, lupa) finds and suckles them, and a woodpecker feeds them. A shepherd and his wife find them and foster them to manhood, as simple shepherds. The twins, still ignorant of their true origins, prove to be natural leaders. Each acquires many followers. When they discover the truth of their birth, they kill Amulius and restore Numitor to his throne. Rather than wait to inherit Alba Longa, they choose to found a new city. The story seems very much like the story of Moses being set into a basket and onto a river to be saved by as slave. I find it interesting that the notion of Moses feels true, though the Remus and Romulus story feel like mythology. There are some other ties to a priest that would marry couples despite a law prohibiting marrying lovers, but the true source of Valentine’s Day is Rome's Founding Day. This is exceptional considering the differences between the Hebrew Jews of the time and the Romans, being that Romans believed in and prayed to many Gods including Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Isis and Vulcan among many others....and well Jews believe as Christians do that there is but One (1) God. I don't mean to convince anyone, but thought this enlightenment might do the good that it should, so I shared. Comment if you care to do so.