History of Valentine's Day: From the Church to Traditions

My college had four sororities. A large percentage of the girls on campus belonged to one of these sororities. Every sister at the school had to send every other sister a little pink valentine (think SpongeBob, Disney Princess, Winnie the Pooh, PowerPuff Girls, etc.). A neat stack of little square cards would not have been bad to handle, but the majority of these love notes had candy attached, making their handling awkward and inconvenient. No other holiday at the school post office compared to Valentine's Day.

In elementary school I loved Valentine's Day: chocolate and cupcakes and heart-shaped sugar cookies, picking out valentines, and, most important, a party. You bought valentines for everyone in your class. It had to do with friendship, not romantic getaways to ski resorts, expensive gifts, and guilt. In middle school it was just another day of pubertal exchanges. In high school Valentine's Day was sometimes acknowledged by a school dance, but our glorious apathy made it an unspecial affair. I suppose the sorority valentine exchange was an extended elementary school party, but with me passing out all of the valentines and not getting any cupcakes. So, by the time I reached college, I had run the spectrum from loving Valentine's Day to hating Valentine's Day.

After hours of sliding tiny becandied cards into thousands of mailboxes, I would console myself with the pieces of candy that had fallen off of the valentines, and with paper-cut palms bless the sunset when it finally came.

However, this left me at a spiritual crossroad: hating Valentine's Day is just as lame as loving Valentine's Day (if you do not attend or work at an elementary school). I could be lukewarm about Valentine's Day, but lukewarmness is even more lame than love or hate. I couldn't ignore it like I could in middle and high school; I needed my on-campus job, and thus needed to put valentines into mailboxes. So I decided to approach it objectively, sociologically, historically.

This article is for those of you who would like to join me in this approach. Unfortunately, the history of Valentine's Day is a bit nebulous. Since the official name of the holiday is St. Valentine's Day, it's safe to deduce that the holiday is religious in origin. The Catholic Encyclopedia lists three St. Valentines. One a priest in Rome, one a bishop of Interamna, one a man who suffered and died in Africa. The first two are described as having been martyred on February 14.

According to Infoplease, around 496 CE Pope Gelasius I declared February 14 to be St. Valentine's Day. Two stories of St. Valentine and the origin of St. Valentine's Day are common: (1) a priest was executed for illegally marrying Christians, and (2) an imprisoned priest fell in love with a jailor's daughter and wrote her love notes. In both stories, Emperor Claudius II, of third century Rome, is the bad guy.

In the first story, Emperor Claudius had come to the conclusion that young, unmarried men made the best soldiers, so he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine then secretly married young soldiers, and when caught by Roman authorities, was put to death. The second story simply has Valentine in jail, during which time he fell in love with a young girl, usually said to be the jailor's daughter. Some versions say she was blind and Valentine restored her sight. He wrote a letter to her on the night of his execution and signed it "from your Valentine."

Many Christians will tell you that St. Valentine's Day is celebrated on February 14 because this is the date of St. Valentine's martyrdom. However, his manner of death is unclear, let alone the date of his death. So, February 14 is as a good a date as any other. Conveniently, February 14th is the same time of year the Roman festival of Lupercalia was celebrated. Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Romulus and Remus, the mythic founders of Rome, and to Faunus, the god of agrictulture, and began on February 15, the beginning of Roman spring. A dog (for purity) and a goat (for fertility) were sacrificed, and boys stripped the goats skin and went around town slapping girls with the goat skin. (Don't worry, the girls were fine with it. It was supposed to make them fertile.) Later in the day, all the single ladies of Rome would put their names in an urn, and the single men would pull out a name and be partnered with the woman for a year. Many of these pairings ended in marriage. Chances are, the Catholic church wasn't too keen on the lottery mating system, and tried to counteract the pagan festival with a Christian festival.

Valentine's Day is going to happen whether you like it or not. But now that you know its origins, you don't have to participate in the commercial orgy, and maybe, just maybe, appreciate the day. I'm not telling you to go out and slap girls with goat skin, but I know I'd rather be hit with a bit of bloody goat than have to put valentines in mailboxes. It was still hard to get through Valentine's Day at the post office, but after the first year I had stopped blaming Valentine's Day itself. Instead of succumbing to commercial vomit, write a nice letter to a lover, friend, or family member (especially sorority sisters: think of your post office workers!). Maybe make some heart-shaped sugar cookies for yourself. St. Valentine did not give flowers or jewelery or little squares of hard paper, he gave love and letters.

Valentine's Day Fun Facts

- The oldest valentine in existence was written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife, while Charles was imprisoned in the Tower of London

- The exchanging of letters and tokens of friendship and love became popular in England in the seventeenth century, and by the end of the century premade cards were popular

- Americans likely began trading valentines in the early eighteenth century

- Esther A. Howlund is credited as making the first mass-produced valentines in the United States in the 1840s

- St. Valentine is the patron saint of affianced couples, bee keepers, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, happy marriages, love, lovers, plague, travelers, and young people

- The casket holding the believed remains of St. Valentine can be viewed every Valentine's Day at the Whitefriar Street Church in Dublin, Ireland

- Cupid is the son of Venus, Roman goddess of love (Eros and Aphrodite in Greek mythology)

- About one million cards are exchanged on Valentine's Day

- Sending Valentine's Day cards became so popular in the 1800s because of a huge drop in postage price

- It's said that if a woman sees a robin flying overhead on Valentine's Day, she'll marry a sailor; if she sees a sparrow, she'll marry a poor man and be very happy; if she sees a goldfinch, she'll marry a millionaire

- February 14 is Drew Bledsoe's birthday

Borgna Brunner, "Valentine's Day History," http://www.infoplease.com/spot/valentinesdayhistory.html
Catholic Encyclopedia, "St. Valentine" http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15254a.htm
Catholic Online, "St. Valentine" http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=159
The History Channel, "The History of Valentine's Day," http://www.history.com/minisites/valentine/viewPage?pageId=882
http://www.roman-emperors.org/claudgot.htm
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Lupercalia.html
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/r/romulus.html
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/f/faunus.html