History of Valentine’s Day: Everything You Need to Know

History of Valentine’s Day: Everything You Need to Know

Valentine’s day is one of the most celebrated days in the world where lovers express their affection by gifting each other gifts. The history of Valentine’s Day can be traced back to the 3^rd Century in Rome where a priest named Valentinus was executed and later beatified as St Valentine. Every time February 14^th comes around, millions of people fill the streets with red and profess their love to their partners.

Therefore, this article will delve into a brief history of Valentine’s Day and how it came to be. The article will provide great insight into where Valentine’s Day originated, the story of its patron saint and how it is shrouded in mystery.

The legend of St. Valentine

A picture of St. Valentine by brockbuilt-Wikimedia

There are differing legends are celebrating three saints called Valentines or Valentinus. According to a tale, Valentine was a priest who served in Rome in the third century. Emperor Claudius II forbade young men from getting married because he believed that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and kids. Realizing the injustice of the law, Valentine defied Claudius and proceeded to secretly marry young lovers. When Valentine’s deeds were discovered, Claudius gave the order to have him executed.

Other sources insinuate that the holiday originated from Valentine who was killed while helping Christians in Rome to escape the harsh conditions they were facing in Roman prisons. Legend says that after Valentine was imprisoned, he sent the first valentine greeting to a young girl that he had fallen in love with, presumably his jailer’s daughter.

It started as a pagan holiday

While most people believe that Valentine’s Day was created to commemorate the death of saint valentine, others believe that the Catholic church decided to place Saint Valentine’s day in the middle of February as a way to Christianize Lupercalia which was a pagan celebration. The festival was primarily a fertility festival that was dedicated to Faunus who was the Roman god of agriculture and also dedicated to Romulus and Remus who were Roman founders.

To start the event, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would assemble in a sacred cave where it was said that a she-wolf, or Lupa, had taken care of the infants Romulus and Remus, the city’s founders. The priests would offer a dog for cleansing and a goat for fertility. They would then cut the goat’s skin into strips, bathe it in the blood of the sacrifice, and proceed through the streets, lightly slapping both young women and agricultural fields. Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because it was thought to increase their fertility for the upcoming year. Sometime later in the day, the women would place their names in a big urn and the bachelors would come and pick a name and then be paired with the chosen lady for a year. Most of these arrangements ended in marriage.

Although Lupercalia survived the early growth of Christianity, it was forbidden by Pope Gelasius at the end of the 5th century when he proclaimed February 14 as St. Valentine’s Day. But the day didn’t become to be associated with love until much later. The concept that Valentine’s Day should fall in the middle of February was strengthened by the widespread belief in Europe during the Middle Ages that February 14 marked the start of the birds’ breeding season.

Love and Valentine’s Day

Valentines day treats by Silar-Wikimedia

More than a thousand years after the martyr’s passing, Geoffrey Chaucer, a mediaeval poet, ruled that the February feast of St. Valentinus should be connected to birds mating. This was the first time that Valentine’s Day was formally associated with romance. English birds mated in February, and soon after Chaucer made the connection in his “Parliament of Foules,” European nobility started exchanging love letters when English birds mated.

Soon after, Ophelia from Shakespeare’s play Love’s Labour’s Lost referred to herself as Hamlet’s Valentine. Shakespeare and Chaucer’s romanticization of the occasion quickly gained ground in Britain and the rest of Europe. Valentine gained a lot of popularity that even King Henry V looked for a writer to write a valentines note to Catherine of Valois.

Cupid and Valentine’s Day

A lithograph of cupid by village antiques-Wikimedia

On Valentine’s Day cards, Cupid is frequently depicted as a naked cherub shooting love arrows at unwary couples. However, the Greek god of love, Eros, is where the Roman god Cupid first appeared. There are several different versions of his birth; some claim he is the son of Nyx and Erebus, and others claim he is the son of Aphrodite and Ares, Iris and Zephyrus or even Aphrodite and Zeus.

Greek Archaic writers described Eros as a gorgeous immortal who played with people’s emotions. He used leaden arrows to sow dislike and golden arrows to arouse love, according to the poets. He didn’t start being portrayed as the cheeky, fat child he’d turned into on Valentine’s Day cards until the Hellenistic era.

Esther Howland invented the modern valentine’s card

One of Esther Howland’s Valentine designs by the Metropolitan Museum of Art-Wikimedia

The mid-19^th century did not have a lot of options in terms of choosing valentines cards. After seeing this gap in the market, Esther Howland took this as an opportunity. With her family owning a stationery store, Esther was aware that she could get fancier valentines cards that could appeal to people. Therefore, she created cards that featured lace details and unique designs. The cards were well received by English couples and she soon needed to hire more people to help her with her business.

Valentine’s Day in contemporary society

A picture of soldiers reading valentines day cards by Jeff Ledesma-Wikimedia

The Hall brothers’ wager on greeting cards turned out to be a wise investment, and mass-producing cards aimed at devoted couples was also shrewd. Valentine’s Day cards are still given today, with an estimated 145 million being sent annually, making it the second-most-gifted occasion behind Christmas.

Furthermore, $27.4 billion was spent in 2020 on the holiday as people buy chocolates, roses, jewellery, and romantic dinners for their loved ones to commemorate the day. This shows that many sectors of the production and service industry benefit from the holiday.