Where Did Valentine's Day Come From?
Where Did Valentine's Day Come From?
The legends surrounding St. Valentine's Day are so varied that the researcher can choose from a buffet of origin stories, and ultimately decide to celebrate the holiday for the reasons most fitting to his or her personal tastes. There is a tale to be told here for each of an array of personalities, be they hedonist, romantic, or pious. Unfortunately, the inverse to this is that the veracity of most of these legends is highly dubious.
Religious Reasons Why St. Valentine's Day Was Created
Some of the information passed around about the holiday can be verified as fact, however. It is true that St. Valentine's Day was established as a Catholic feast day by Pope Gelasius I around 498 A.D., and the Catholic church removed it from their calendars of official feasts in 1969, due to the lack of any clear historical information about St. Valentine. It is also true that Gelasius most likely decided to place the feast day on February 14th in an attempt to quell interest and participation in a still popular ancient Roman festival called Lupercalia. This pagan party of epic proportions had nude men whip women with the bloodied skins of sacrificed dogs or goats to enhance their fertility, and culminated in the name drawing of local eligible women from an urn by single men on February 15th, resulting in year long pairings by lottery. These festivities were still occurring more than a century after Constantine had decreed Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, so Gelasius' motivation for the creation of St. Valentine's Day is clear.
Valentine, a Roman priest
While history can attest to the existence of eight centuries of annual pagan festivities, as well as the agendas of the religious figures who sought to stymie them, the historical record is much murkier on the actual martyr Valentine. Speculations abound about the saint's trials and accomplishments, as well as which St. Valentine (there are three) the holiday, in fact, reveres. The most popular piece of lore takes place in 3rd century Rome, where Emperor Claudius II had recently outlawed marriages for young men in the belief that single men made better soldiers. Valentine, a Roman priest, defied the decree and continued to wed young lovers until his actions were discovered and he was jailed and ultimately executed by beheading. One variation on this account has Valentine falling in love with his jailer's daughter, who was apparently a frequent visitor, and writing her a letter shortly before his death that was signed "From your Valentine."
Another further embroidery of the story places the date of Valentine's decapitation or burial on February 14, 270 A.D. A decidedly less romantic conception of the Roman Valentine simply has him assisting martyrs under Claudius' persecution, sans frilly details, although a few tack on an attempt to convert Claudius the Goth to Christianity. Still other straightforward religious interpretations of this holiday place emphasis on either one of two other Valentines who were martyred; Valentine of Terni, a 2nd century bishop who was persecuted by Emperor Aurelian, or Valentine who suffered and was martyred in Africa, but about whom little else is known.
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