Not much discussion on this one. I guess I'll weigh in. Humorous, kinda funny, basic sort of misinformation where to support your opinion, you throw in enough factoids as to make the rest of the fiction sound plausable.

 

Lupercalia, was a real festival, and it did basically occur as written. It began sometime around 70 BCE. Some of the sites make a big deal about the fact that it didn't seem to be dedicated to a particular god. This is correct. It was a fertility based ritual and at that time in Rome, a lot of gods weren't really personified. The festival was origionally started when Rome was a bunch of huts down by the river. Obviously over the next 500 + years the festival changed into different things for different people. By the time this pope tied Candlemas, or the Purification of the Virgin to the day before, Lupercalia was probably though of as a joke, kinda like Halloween is now. In that time, Rome had gone through so many state religions it makes your head spin.

 

Realistically, it's like taking a new holiday, let's say Martin Luther King day, and going back to the calendar of 1400 and finding out there was a regional holiday then and whinning that putting MLK day on the day before that regional holiday somehow demonstrates a huge African-American conspiracy.