Valentine’s Day is known to all of us as one to love our significant other, cards, chocolates, and flowers. In addition to its famous colors red, white, and pink. Sometimes purple, which is also a pretty color as well! So, let me take you on a journey to how Valentine’s Day came to be according to historical facts. Once upon a time, the Romans started a festival called “Lupercalia”, which was a fertility celebration that began on February 13th and went on until February 15th. Among other things, during this festival, young women would put their names in an urn; young men would then draw names from the urn; whoever’s name they drew would then be their female companion for a calendar year. This festival was celebrated annually for roughly 800 years. Eventually, the Catholics came along and decided they didn’t like this festival where young men were basically drawing names of young women to have as a sexual partner for a year. So the Catholics decided to do what they had been doing with various other customs of the day, trying to replace it with a Catholic tradition to try to phase out the original “heathen” tradition. So Pope Gelasius the first, in 496 AD, decided to try and replace the festival with one of his own creation; in particular, he now replaced the lottery part of the festival with his own lottery celebrated his festival around the same time, February 14th. From now on, he proposed that, instead of drawing young girl’s names from the urn, instead both boys and girls should draw saints names from the urn and for a year they would then strive to be like those saints. As you might imagine, this didn’t go over well as it was a lot less fun than pulling names for primarily sexual purposes. So regardless of the change, people still used it as a festival to try to gain the affections of one another, often through written notes. Eventually, they went back to drawing girl’s names from the urns until the 16 century when the Roman Catholic Church once again decided to try to force Saint Valentine’s Day back down the Romans throats. So, who was Saint Valentine?
Well actually, there was more than one historic Saint Valentine at the time, Pope Gelasius the first proposed to make Saint Valentine the patron of the new celebration he created to replace the Festival of Lupercalia. However, there were three Saint Valentines and even the Catholic Church today isn’t sure exactly which one Pope Gelasius the first intended to honor. It is generally thought that he meant to honor only one of them and that one was a priest who was eventually martyred by Roman emperor Claudius II around 270 AD and buried on the Via Flaminia on February 14th; hence why it is thought the Pope picked this Saint Valentine in the first place. Generally speaking, the feast day of Saint Valentine was not terribly popular for quite some time after its inception. Eventually, though, in England in the 18th century, gift – giving and exchanging handmade love note cards on Valentine’s Day started to become very popular. This tradition of gift giving and making handmade love notes and exchanging them on Valentine’s Day eventually spread to America. Esther A. Howland, whose father ran a large book and stationery store, received a Valentine and decided this would be a great way to make money; so was inspired to begin mass producing these handmade cards in the 1850s.
Since then, the holiday has steadily grown to today where it is an absolute marketing and money making machine. According to the Greeting Card Association, more than 25% of all cards, about one billion cards each year. Further, in the 1980’s the money making machine that is Valentine’s Day. They began running marketing campaigns promoting the holiday and giving the gift of jewelry to show you really and genuinely love someone, instead of just cards and chocolates. This was obviously a very successful campaign. Today, the original hand-written love notes of the 17th century England have been replaced by mass produced, generic cards and expensive gifts; Valentine’s Day now being a multi – billion dollar money making machine for companies around the world. Among major holidays, it is second only to Christmas in money spent by consumers, with men on average spending twice as much as women. There you have it! The Story of Valentine’s Day, and other interesting facts. Remember something “love kicks butt and makes you strong”.