The 14th of February is now a day dedicated to sentimentality and open expressions of affection; besides being an incredible boon to the candy and greeting-card industries, it is also an excellent way to indulge one’s hormones at the height of an all-too-often brutal winter or corner one’s love interest and make a chocolate-fueled declaration of eternal adoration. However, this holiday which is so often dismissed by the world's single population is not simply a vast capitalist conspiracy between candy manufacturers, Hallmark and daytime television. The origins of the modern Valentine’s Day are much more complex.
Step 1: Ancient Rome
The St. Valentine after whom Valentine’s Day is named was a priest (and possibly bishop) who lived in Imperial Rome during the 3rd century A.D (below). History tells us that he was a physician who was imprisoned for giving aid to incarcerated martyrs, and was subsequently beheaded around the year A.D. 269.
St. Valentine
He is invoked in the Roman Catholic tradition against epilepsy and fainting and as patron of affianced couples, happy marriages, greeting card manufacturers (!) and, of course, love. But how did a Christian martyr become associated with love in the first place? The answer lies in the Roman festival of Lupercalia (depicted below is the Capitoline Wolf, or Lupa Capitolina, from whose name the word "Lupercalia" may have originated), which was a fertility festival with roots in pre-Roman Italy, celebrated in the middle of February.
Capitoline Wolf
"The object of the festival was, by expiation and purification, to secure the fruitfulness of the land, the increase of the flocks and the prosperity of the whole people." The festival was very popular with the Roman people well after the Christianization of the Roman Empire during and after the reign of Emperor Constantine. In fact, Lupercalia survived all the way to the 5th century A.D., when Pope Gelasius I determined that Lupercalia was a threat to the stability of Christian Rome. He therefore declared the Feast of St. Valentine on February 14th, allowing the Roman populace to continue their festivals under the guise of a Christian holy day. However, this only explains Valentine's Day’s festive nature – it does not explain the masses of red plastic hearts that fills today's pharmacies or the nearly one billion Valentine's Day cards sold each year (women, by the way, buy 85% of them). To fully understand, we need to take a second step to England during the time of Geoffrey Chaucer.
Step 2: Medieval England
It would appear that the first time Valentine’s Day was actually associated with romantic love was in 1382, when Geoffrey Chaucer (the author the Canterbury Tales, below) wrote a 700-line poem called "Parlement of Foules." The poem, written to commemorate the first wedding anniversary of King Richard II of England and his wife, Anne of Bohemia.
Geoffrey Chaucer
It is the first recorded work to establish a connection between Valentine's Day and romantic love. This poem probably helped to trigger a wave of romanticism in medieval Europe; in fact, the first valentine on record was written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife, while he was being held prisoner in the Tower of London (depicted below).
Tower of London
It was probably during the medieval period that many of the legends involving St. Valentine were invented, including the fable that Valentine once passed a love note to his jailer's daughter that read "From your Valentine", ostensibly the origin of today's Valentine's Day Card. But the Valentine as we know it comes from… Massachusetts.
Step 3: 19th and 20th Century America
The concept of Valentine’s Day was probably brought to North America by British settlers during the 19th century. The first recognizable mass-produced valentines (below)
Ist Valentines
appeared in 1847 and were made from embossed paper lace by Esther Howland, who sold them in her father’s bookstore in Worcester, Massachusetts. Since then, the manufacture and sale of valentines has taken off. By the later half of the 20th century, it became acceptable to exchange small gifts such as candy or flowers as well as cards. The increased marketing of Valentine's Day has led some to brand it a "Hallmark Holiday", though it is unlike other such "artificial holidays" (Secretary's Day or Sweetest Day, for example) in that it does have significant historical basis, as explored above. In any case, Valentine's Day has become increasingly commercialized – during the 1980s, the jewelry industry jumped onto the Valentine's Day bandwagon by promoting Valentine's Day as the perfect occasion to give diamonds as a gift (remember "Every Kiss Begins With Kay"?). It is anybody's guess whether or not Valentine's Day will become even more mercantile (auto manufacturers have already begun promoting Valentine's Day car sales) or if it will gradually return to its more modest 19th century roots. But whatever the general trends, Valentine's Day will always be what we make of it.
Works Consulted
"Hallmark Holiday." Wikipedia. Accessed 7 Feburary 2007.
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallmark _holiday
"Lupercalia." Wikipedia. Accessed 7 February 2007.
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupercal ia
"Valentine's Day." Wikipedia. Accessed 7 February 2007.
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valenti nes_Day
"Valentine of Rome." Catholic Community Forum – Patron Saints Index. Accessed 7 February 2007.
www.catholic-forum.com/SAINTS/sain tv06.htm
