Valentine’s Day: Where did it all begin?
Valentine's Day might be a day where loved ones exchange gifts and enjoy a day of romance, but February 14 was not always a romantic day.
Valentine’s Day is celebrated all around the globe, with loved ones exchanging gifts in the name of St Valentine. But who is St Valentine and how did Valentine’s Day begin?
There are several stories surrounding the day, each involving a man named Valentine. One popular story has it that Saint Valentine of Rome was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry and for ministering to Christians, who were persecuted under the Roman Empire.
According to legend, during his time in prison. St Valentine healed the jailer’s daughter and wrote her a touching letter before his execution. He signed the letter, “Your Valentine” as a farewell.
The day first apparently became associated with romantic love in the 14th century withing Geoffrey Chaucer’s circle when the tradition of courtly love flourished.
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The day’s popularity grew to the extent that in 18th-century England, it evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery and sending greeting cards which were known as Valentines.
Valentine’s Day symbols that are used today include the heart, doves, and Cupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten valentines have given way to mass-produced greeting cards.
While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated to commemorate St Valentine, others claim the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan celebration of Lupercalia.
Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.
To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf.
The priests would then allegedly sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. They would then strip the goat’s hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, gently slapping both women and crop fields with the goat hide.
Instead of being horrified by being slapped with goat hide, Roman women welcomed it, because they believed it would make them more fertile in the coming year.
Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.
Lupercalia was eventually outlawed at the end of the 5th century, when Pope Gelasius declared February 14 as St. Valentine’s Day. It was not until much later, however, that the day became definitively associated with love.
During the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of Valentine’s Day should be a day for romance.
Regardless of how Valentine’s Day started, one thing is for certain, it is the one day a year when you can shower your loved with with romance and affection and not look corny.
