The origin of Saint Valentine is shrouded in mystery because there were so many saints by that name and different stories attached to each one.
What many people don't know is that Valentine’s Day has roots in both Christian and ancient Roman traditions. Archaeologists unearthed a Roman catacomb and an ancient church dedicated to Saint Valentine which is how it's known that such a patron saint existed and whose story is celebrated each year.
Saint Valentine’s Life
The three stories surrounding the mystery of this holiday all lead to a man who was sympathetic, heroic and romantic – the trademarks for today’s modern Valentine’s Day.
In one story, Valentine was killed for attempting to help Christians escape Roman prisons where they were being tortured and beaten.
In another story where historians have evidence of such an event, Saint Valentine was a temple priest who performed marriages for young lovers in secret when Emperor Claudius outlawed marriage for single young men, claiming they made better soldiers than those with wives and children. When the emperor caught Valentine performing marriages, he ordered Valentine to death.
In this story, Saint Valentine sent the first “valentine” greeting himself. The night before his death, he wrote a farewell note to the jailer’s daughter with whom he had fallen in love signing the note “From your Valentine”. His execution landed on February 14, 270. Ultimately, in the late 490s, Pope Gelasius marked February 14 as a day of celebration in honor of his martyrdom. Still others claim the Christian church decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day on this date to christianize celebrations of the pagan Lupercalia festival.
Saint Valentine is the patron saint of love, young people, happy marriages, bee keepers, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, lovers, plague and travelers. In pictures Valentine is represented with birds and roses.
Lupercalia Festival and Valentine's Day
The Lupercalia festival was outlawed and deemed un-Christian because it utilized a Roman “lottery” system of pairing up men and women.
Roman priests would gather at the home of the founders of Rome and sacrifice a goat for fertility and a dog for purification. The boys would dip the sliced goat hides and gently slap women and crops with the hides. The women believed getting touched with the goat hide would make them more fertile in the next year. Later, the women’s names would be placed in a big urn and bachelors would choose a name and the two would be paired up, usually resulting in a marriage.
In France and England, however; it was believed that a bird’s mating season started on the fourteenth of February thus making Valentine’s Day a day of romance.
The Modern Valentine’s Day Celebration
In the 1840s, Esther Howland, “Mother of the Valentine,” sold the first mass-produced valentines in America. These valentines were made with lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as “scrap.” By this time, it was common for friends and lovers to exchange small token of affection or handwritten notes. By the end of this century, printed cards began to replace written letters because of technological advances.
The oldest known valentine is existence is at the British Library in London. It was written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London.
Valentine’s Day is the second largest card-sending holiday of the year with an estimated one billion cards being sent according to the Greeting Card Association. Christmas is number one with an estimated 2.6 billion. Approximately 85 percent of all valentines are purchased by women. Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France and Australia.
Sources:
VAL101
Tamara Frank - My name is Tamara Frank and have been writing for Suite101 for two years. I have self-published a book titled "Lessons I Learned From ...
