Love and Valentines Throughout History

Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is an annual holiday designated to celebrate love, on February 14th. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring an early Christian martyr named Saint Valentine. Through later folk traditions, it was shaped into a holiday of significant cultural, religious, and commercial celebrations of romance and love in many regions of the world.

Valentine’s Day is highly popular in the United States as well as in Britain, Canada, and Australia. It is also celebrated in other countries, including Argentina, France, Mexico, South Korea, and the Philippines, where it is the most common date of wedding anniversaries and mass weddings of hundreds of couples.

This holiday is most commonly celebrated by exchanging handmade or store-bought “Valentines” or other tokens of affection like chocolates or flowers. In many schools, it has become customary for young students to bring in Valentines and goodies to exchange with their classmates. Traditions of the holiday’s observance can vary in different countries.

According to Britannica.com, the origin of the holiday has close similarities to Lupercalia, a Roman festival held in mid-February, created to celebrate the arrival of spring. The holiday included fertility rites, and the pairing off of women with men by lottery. Towards the end of the 5th century, Pope Gelasius I forbade the celebration of Lupercalia and the holiday was later replaced by St. Valentine’s Day. The true origin of the holiday is vague and Valentine’s Day wasn’t celebrated as a day of romance until the 14th century.

St. Valentine was a Roman priest and physician who suffered martyrdom during the persecution of Christians by the emperor Claudius II Gothicus around the year 270 CE. He was buried on the Via Flaminia, and Pope Julius I reportedly built a basilica over his grave.

Although there were several Christian martyrs named Valentine, the day may have gotten its name from a priest who was martyred around the year 270 CE by the emperor Claudius II Gothicus. Legend says that the priest had signed a letter “from your Valentine” to his jailer’s daughter, whom he had befriended and apparently healed from blindness.

Some accounts assert that it was St. Valentine of Terni, a bishop, whom the holiday was named after, though it is possible the two saints were actually one person. Another common legend states that St. Valentine defied the emperor’s orders and secretly married couples to spare the husbands from war. It is for this reason that his feast day is associated with love.

Formal messages of love, or valentines, first appeared in the 1500s, and by the late 1700s commercially printed cards were being used. The first commercial valentines in the United States were printed in the mid-1800s. The Valentines commonly depict Cupid, the Roman god of love, along with hearts and other symbols of love. Because it was thought that the avian mating season begins in mid-February, birds also became a symbol of the day. Traditional gifts include candy and flowers, particularly red roses, which are a symbol of beauty and love.

Despite its obscure history and origins, Valentine’s Day has become an opportunity for the expression of love and the exchange of heartfelt gifts, messages, and sentiments. Whether you are a hater of the holiday, or ready to splurge for that special someone, remember the unique history that led to the holiday’s annual celebrations.