Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, a day for celebrating love and relationships. However, it began as a feast day celebrating the decapitation of at least one Christian martyr.
Before Saint Valentine became involved with Valentine’s Day, early Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia from February 13th to 15th. The men would sacrifice a goat and dog and then use the skins of those animals to hit the women, as they believed they would become more fertile. This feast also included a matchmaking ceremony, where men would draw the name of women to be coupled up with for the rest of the night or longer.
This celebration began to shift into what we now celebrate during the third century under the short reign of Emperor Claudius Gothicus from 269-270 CE.
A group of Belgian monks, called the Bollandists, spent centuries gathering ancient texts to learn about saints throughout history, and began publishing their research in 1673.
Thanks to the continuing research and publication of the Bollandists, we know the origins of Valentine’s Day. There are many sources that talk of Saint Valentine who died on February 14th during Gothicus’ reign.
While there is evidence of at least 3 Saints with the name Valentine who died during the third century, the Bollandists have not found much of the story of one of them, and it is possible the other two stories are variations of the same Saint Valentine.
One account follows the Roman priest Valentinus, who was arrested during Emperor Gothicus’ reign and put into the custody of an aristocrat named Asterius. While in custody, Valentinus talked about Christ and Asterius vowed that if his daughter’s sight could be fixed, he would convert to Christianity.
The daughters sight was fixed, and Asterius converted, but Emperor Gothicus sentenced all three to death and Valentinus was beheaded on February 14th. The other Valentinus was from Italy and had an almost identical story, which is why some believe these two were the same person.
The feast of Lupercalia was a pagan feast, so in the 5th century, Pope Gelasius I combined Lupercalia with the celebration of Saint Valentine of February 14th to expel the pagan rituals. For hundreds of years, there was a feast annually on February 14th to celebrate Saint Valentine’s martyrdom.
Over a thousand years after Saint Valentine’s death, Geoffrey Chaucer made note in “Parliament of Foules” of the fact that birds in England mated during February. After this, English royalty sent love letters during seasons when birds mated and this continued for centuries, spreading to all people of England. In Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” Ophelia calls Hamlet her valentine, which means by 1600, ‘valentine’ now meant ‘special someone.’
In the 15th and 16th centuries, people used February 14th specifically as an excuse to write love letters and poetry, and had forgotten about the beheading of Saint Valentine. In the middle ages, paper cards were commonly exchanged.
As the United States and other countries were colonized, the tradition of writing love letters stuck and spread into the new civilizations being created. With the industrial revolution, cards and love letters became exponentially easier to make and mass produce.
In 1913, Hallmark was the first to mass produce Valentine’s Day cards in Kansas City, MO. The holiday has continuously been big for businesses, and is expected that in 2019, more than $20 billion dollars will be spent for the holiday.
The National Retail Federation (NRF) has been collecting data on Valentine’s Day since 2004, and sales have grown almost every year. The NRF’s data shows that there are less people participating in the holiday, but those who are, are spending a lot more. They estimate that only 51% of Americans will participate, but that each person will spend a little over $160.
Valentine’s Day is peak consumerism, and people definitely put a lot of pressure on one day meaning a lot for their relationships. People spreading and showing their love shouldn’t be dependent on one day a year, however, what’s wrong with showing a little extra love than normal?
Emma Farina
Opinions Columnist