Valentine's Day: Celebrating Its Pagan Roots

Most people are well aware that holidays such as Christmas, Easter and Halloween have deeply pagan roots. Many even are familiar with the fact that these holidays were celebrated, much as we celebrate them now, long before Christ ever walked the Earth. It may be a little surprising to some to learn that Valentine's Day, a day dedicated to a saint would have pagan origins reaching far back into the distant past. Modern pagans who enjoy celebrating the holiday, but wonder about it's roots and validity as a holiday will be comforted to learn where it derives from.

While the birth of the holiday is still debatable some things can be agreed upon. Valentine's day and the way it is celebrated evolved out of the Imperial Roman Feast of Lupercus. For at least 800 years prior to the arrival of Christianity Romans had celebrated the yearly Feast of Lupercus on February 15th as a day dedicated to love. Romans didn't celebrate it the same way we do, but the DNA of the two matches. In preparation for the holiday all young women wishing to take a new lover would place their names in a communal vase, which all eligible young men would draw from on Lupercus Eve. The ideal of the drawing was to make possible love matches that would last, but often created a situation of one year's worth of meaningless sex, that was over the next Lupercus Eve. A much loved tradition among Imperial Romans the Feast of Lupercus was traditionally upheld in this way unthreatened for centuries. The beginning of the end for the feast of Lupercus began, oddly enough, when the Emperor Claudius the Second outlawed marriage for his soldiers. Those that did find true love at the Feast of Lupercus and still wanted to get married were forbidden to do so, and this caused a mass conversion to Christianity , which would allow them to marry as they wished. Legend says that St. Valentine was a local priest in Rome who married them secretly and was martyred for this act, which the church capitalized upon in order to turn the Romans away from the pagan celebration of Lupercus by renaming it to honor the sainted Valentine. As was the case with all other subverted holidays, the Roman pagans were more likely to convert if allowed to keep their traditions intact and only changed the name and the legend attached to it. Eventually, the name drawing tradition was also replaced with the drawing of Saint's names by the children and gradually evolved into the tradition we know today~ card giving!

While drawing young ladies names from a vase and shacking up for a year might be distasteful and impractical in modern times, pagans can enjoy their own celebrations for the Feast of Lupercus in rather traditional ways. Pink and red candles can set the stage for a romantic and meaningful celebration, so light a few , break out your best love spells and have a wonderful Feast Of Lupercus.