What we know about Valentine’s Day can be summarized with love, gifts of candy or flowers or other trinkets to show your emotional connection with a loved one. Perhaps a nice dinner and some late night activities *wink, wink*. But where does Valentine’s Day come from? How did these traditions come to be? They can be tracked to the ancient Roman holiday of Lupercalia and the tradition of card giving that originated in Victorian England, and, of course, the legend of St. Valentine.
St. Valentine
The Catholic church has long honored three martyred St. Valentines/Valentinus. One legend tells the tale of the tyrannical Emperor Claudius II who decreed that he needed single men for his vast armies and forbade marriage to ensure that his ranks would be filled to his desire. Valentine married men in secret to protest the injustice of the decree. Claudius discovered Valentine’s disobedience and immediately put him to death. However, it is argued that St. Valentine of Terni was the true bishop behind the holiday. He was also beheaded by Emperor Claudius ll. The date of these supposed beheadings was on February the 14th.
Valentine is also speculated to have been executed for attempting to free Christian prisoners from Roman prisons where they were tortured and beaten ruthlessly. In the story, Valentine himself was imprisoned and fell in love with the daughter of one of his jailers. Before his execution, he wrote her a love letter signed “From your Valentine”. This began the tradition of the saying and the card giving we observe today. And, because of these romanticized legends, Valentine became one of the most recognized saints in England and France.
However, several scholars hold that there is precious little evidence to support these legends. They believe that the romanticism that developed around valentines was due to Geoffrey Chaucer, a legendary poet of the middle ages. They maintain that the stories told by Chaucer bear such a strong resemblance to the legends of St. Valentine that it is enough to raise substantial suspicion. One theory states that Chaucer’s romance was based off of the betrothal between King Richard II and Anne of Bohemia rather than the alleged St. Valentine. However, most of his romantic writing were associated with February 14th, explaining the date for the holiday.
Lupercalia
The Roman festival of Lupercalia is also thought to be an origin of the holiday. This fertility festival was held in honor of the God Faus, a god of agriculture. It was also held in honor of the founders of Rome, Remus and Romulus. Priests would gather at the cave where it is believed the Remus and Romulus were cared for by a she-wolf, also called a Lupa, when they were infants. A goat would be sacrificed for fertility and a dog for purification. Strips of the goats hide would be dipped in the blood before gently slapping fields and women in town with the bloody strips. This was believed to encourage fertility in women and crops.
On the final day of the festival, single women would place their names in an urn that bachelors would choose one of the names out of. The name chosen would be that man’s match for the next year, often ending in marriage.
Like many pagan practices, after the rise of Christianity, the practices and traditions were outlawed out of existence at the end of the 5th century. The last remaining idea of Lupercalia was immortalized in Geoffrey Chaucer’s writings in the 13th century.
Today
Written Valentines began to appear in the 1400’s. The oldest in existence was written in 1415; a love poem written by CHales, Duke of Orleans to his wife during his imprisonment in the TOwer of London following the Battle of Agincourt.
Valentine’s day is currently celebrated in Canada, Mexico, the UK, France, and Australia. The holiday became popular in the United Kingdom around the 17th century, and by the 18th century, it was common practice to exchange tokens of affection between friends and lovers. In the 1900s, printed cards began to replace written letters and quips. Pre-made cards were encouraged as the time period discouraged the expression of true, deep feelings between people. The 1700’s saw the rise of handmade valentines in the United States. Today it is estimated that approximately 145 million valentines are sent in the United States, 85 percent of which are bought by women.
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