[monsoonJournal.com] Millions of people around the globe send Valentine’s Day cards to express their affection for someone special. But how did this holiday originate?
By: Raymond Rajabalan
When we think of Valentine’s Day, we call to mind hearts, chocolates, flowers and expressions of love. Yet before joining in the fun, wouldn’t it be interesting to know where this tradition comes from.
Origins of Valentine’s Day
Saint Valentine’s Day or Valentine’s Day falls on February 14. It is the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other; sending Valentine’s cards, candy, or donations to charities. It is very common to present flowers on Valentine’s Day. The holiday is named after three men, all Christian martyrs named Valentine. The day became associated with romantic love in the High Middle Ages , when the tradition of courtly love flourished.
Roman Roots
The history of of valentine’s day is obscure, and further clouded by various fanciful legends.
Valentine’s Day began when the early Roman Catholic Church tried to Christianize an ancient pagan Roman holiday called Lupercalia, celebrated by shepherds on February 15. The word Lipercalia comes from lupus or wolf. That celebration was a licentious festival that honored Lupercus, the hero-hunter of wolves. This festival was so immensely popular among the Roman people that Pope Gelasius 1(492-496) recast this pagan festival as a Christian feast day circa 496, abolishing lupercalia and replacing it by St.Valentine’s day to be celebrated on February 14.
Valentines Galore
Which St. Valentine this early pope intended to honor remains a mystery: according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, there were at least three early Christian saints by that name. One was a priest in Rome, another a bishop in Terni, and of a third St. Valentine almost nothing is known except that he met his end in Africa. Rather astonishingly, all three Valentines were said to have been martyred on Feb. 14.
Most scholars believe that the St. Valentine of the holiday was a priest who attracted the disfavour of Roman emperor Claudius 11 around 270. At this stage, the factual ends and the mythic begins. According to one legend, Claudius II had prohibited marriage for young men, claiming that bachelors made better soldiers. Valentine continued to secretly perform marriage ceremonies but was eventually apprehended by the Romans and put to death. Another legend has it that Valentine, imprisoned by Claudius, fell in love with the daughter of his jailer. Before he was executed, he allegedly sent her a letter signed “from your Valentine.”
Although all historical sources contain some of the same notions about how Valentine’s Day developed, each one highlights another facet of the story.
[”Love means hearts and eyes speak to each other” : At a Visual Arts Exhibition by Upali Ananda, in Colombo - HumanityAshore.org]
According to one of the sources, part of the ancient ceremony entailed putting girls’ names in a box and letting the boys draw them out. Couples would thus be paired off until the following year. The Church substituted saints’ names for girls’ names, in the hope that the participant would model his life after the saint whose name he drew. But by the 16th century, it was once again girls’ names that ended up in the box. Eventually the custom of sending anonymous cards or messages to those one admired became the accepted way of celebrating St. Valentine’s Day.
Over the centuries, the holiday evolved, and by the 18th century, gift-giving and exchanging hand-made cards on Valentine’s Day had become common in England. Hand-made valentine cards made of lace, ribbons, and featuring cupids and hearts eventually spread to the American colonies. The tradition of Valentine’s cards did not become widespread in the United States, however, until the 1850s, when Esther A. Howland, a Mount Holyoke graduate and native of Worcester, Mass., began mass-producing them. Today, of course, the holiday has become a booming commercial success.