Have you ever wondered where Valentine’s Day comes from? Today, the holiday typically brings to mind images of hearts, roses, and tubs of ice cream in the houses of singles across the U.S. You might think of your friend finally downloading Hinge; “Galentine’s”, or even poetry from a loved one. No matter how you see it, Valentine’s Day is a popular, heavily commercialized holiday of love–but it wasn’t always this way. The history of Valentine’s day is long, muddled, and sometimes absolutely wild. More than anything, it’s interesting. I did the research so you don’t have to.
Lupercalia
To figure out how this all started, we have to go back to Ancient Rome. Lupercalia was a pagan fertility festival celebrated from February 13th to 15th. Get ready–this is where it gets a little weird. To celebrate the festival, everyone would get very drunk and very naked, and then the men would sacrifice a goat and a dog and whip women with the hides of those animals. The belief was that this process would bless them with fertility. The celebration also included a matchmaking game: women would put their names in a jar, and men would pick them out and get together with whoever’s name was picked. As the Catholic Church grew, Pope Gelasius I attempted to wipe out the festival by replacing it with a more “morally suitable” option, celebrating St. Valentine.
St. Valentine
There’s a few different interpretations of who St. Valentine is, and various stories associated with the name. It could refer to either of two men that were executed by the Romans on February 14th, although in two different years. Weird coincidence, right? Both were revered christian martyrs: one a bishop in Terni and the other a priest in Rome. One legend says that Valentinus restored the sight of his jailor’s daughter, to whom he wrote a letter ending with “From your Valentine.” Others say that Bishop Valentine was put to death after marrying young couples in secret after Emperor Claudius II made it illegal to be married. Still others contend that St. Valentine was simply executed for giving aid to other christians and converting pagans. No matter what story is true, we know he was executed and considered a saint, but it wasn’t until the 14th century that his associations with love and couples truly sprung up. This changed with poets like Chaucer, who wrote poetry pairing the name Valentine with topics like love and coupling up.
Modern Valentine’s Day
So we have the set up: this history of Lupercalia, legends surrounding St. Valentine, and Chaucer’s poetry all make February ripe for Valentine’s Day as we know it. But how did we get to the commercialized version that we know now? The rise of industrialization, the middle class, and advertising in the early and mid 1800s are the most likely culprits. For example, although the first documented Valentine to be sent in the U.S. was in 1779, it was Esther Howland who popularized them in 1847. Due to the commercial revolution and the success of advertising in the 1840s, Valentine’s Day quickly became much more recognizable to how we experience it today in about the span of a decade: cards, gifts–even “valentine’s writers” who would write for people who struggled to write their own love letters. Since then, the once unassuming saints day has become an iconic American holiday.
So, how did Valentine’s Day become the holiday that we have today? The answer is a fascinating, centuries-long story about the interplay between culture, religion, and commercialization. The way we celebrate today has roots all the way back to Ancient Rome, but elements that are completely unique to us (looking at you, ice cream and Galentine’s). So next time your friend asks you, “Wait, how did Valentine’s Day start again?” you can tell them: “Girl, it is complicated.”
