A Brief History of St. Valentine’s Day

By Jeb Cook

Valentine’s Day: Hallmark greeting cards, cheap candy, roses grown in greenhouses across the country. It seems that it has become yet another commercialized, secularized farce of a holy day in the Christian calendar. Where did the holiday begin, when it was known commonly as St. Valentine’s Day rather than just Valentine’s ?
Historians believe Valentine’s Day to be named for a Christian priest named Valentine, who was martyred by decapitation in Rome on February 14, 270 A.D., during the persecution of Christians by the emperor Claudius. When researching Valentine’s Day, it was initially difficult to tell whether the Claudius in question was Claudius I or Claudius II. As it turned out, it was Claudius II, but it would have seemed more fitting if St. Valentine had become a martyr during the reign of Claudius I, from 41-53 A.D., because Claudius I had more than a few problems with love.
Claudius divorced his first wife so as to marry another. Evidently, that wife died. He then married a third wife, who conspired against him and married another man. Claudius arranged for an assassin to exterminate them both. At this point, Claudius married his niece (which was illegal, so he changed the law), and Claudius’ niece-wife talked him into adopting her son (who later became the infamous emperor Nero). This fourth wife murdered Claudius by feeding him poisonous mushrooms.
The priest who created the holy day (holy day, holiday… see any resemblance?) made no connection with the customs regarding the romantic love of Valentine cards. The celebration of Valentine’s Day as a lovers’ festival seems to be a Christian adaptation of the pagan Roman festival of the Lupercalia, which Romans had celebrated on February 15. Lupercalia involved a cure from sterility if one was struck with a leather thong made from the skin of a sacrificial goat. The festival also seems to have celebrated the coming of the spring season in general, heralding fertility and the nascence of new flora and fauna.
Because the Romans believed that birds chose their mates on this date, as part of the Lupercalia, boys drew names of girls by lot. The custom evolved so that on St. Valentine’s Day, boys and girls chose each other’s names by lottery and sent love letters to each other.
In the United States, the custom in the early 1900s was to send Valentine cards only anonymously, by mail, so that the recipient would have to guess the identity of his or her admirer.
Over-commercialized or otherwise, Valentine’s Day is what it has become. It has had a significant secular aspect to it for quite some time, however, contrasting with the relatively recent innovations Christians have imposed on Christmas and Easter.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Doubleday Encyclopedia, Collier’s Encyclopedia