The history of the holiday of love
Many people know the traditions, such as chocolate, flowers and handwritten notes to a Valentine, but few know how this holiday originated.
The story of Valentine’s Day starts with its patron saint — or rather saints. The Roman Catholic Church recognizes at least three different Saint Valentines.
Some stories of the holiday’s namesake tell of a Roman priest who would perform secret weddings without the knowledge of proper authority.
Another version of the patron saint was said to be imprisoned and cured his captor’s blind daughter. Before being tortured and decapitated, he sent her a love letter signed as her Valentine.
The third Saint Valentine was a bishop who also performed secret weddings — before being beheaded for it.
Both of the brutal deaths in these tales occurred on Feb. 14.
Sadly for any hopeless romantics looking for a good love story to celebrate this year, both of these stories hold very little value in the true origin of Valentine’s Day.
“The two stories that everybody talks about, the bishop and the priest, they’re so similar that it makes me suspicious,” Bruce Forbes, a professor of religious studies at Morningside College in Iowa, told History.
The original versions of those tales also focus more heavily on the miracles and their gruesome deaths. Little can be related back to romance.
The first traces of romance being associated with Valentine’s Day comes from the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer in the Middle Ages.
In the late 14th century, Chaucer wrote a poem called, “Parliament of Fowls.” In this poem, there’s a line that reads, “For this was on Saint Valentine’s Day, when every bird comes there to choose his mate.”
“It just drives me crazy that the Roman story keeps circulating and circulating,” Forbes also told History. “The bottom line for me is until Chaucer we have no evidence of people doing something special and romantic on Feb. 14.”
If no saints were brutally murdered in the name of love, then how did Valentine’s Day earn its spot on the calendar?
Some historians believe that it might be an offshoot of Lupercalia, a Pagen festival celebrated on Feb. 15.
Unlike Valentine’s Day, History describes the festivities as “a bloody, violent and sexually-charged celebration awash with animal sacrifice, random matchmaking and coupling in the hopes of warding off evil spirits and infertility.”
As Christianity became popularized in Rome, the festival would become outlawed as it was deemed to clash with Christian ideology.
Valentine’s Day notes began circulating between the 15th and 18th centuries.
Another common symbol of the day of romance is the Roman god Cupid, a cherub whose arrow will cause whomever it hits to fall madly in love.
Cupid actually finds his roots as Eros, the god of love in Greek mythology. When Valentine’s Day became associated with romance, the god of love became the chunky baby we know today.
The tradition of hand-written notes slowly grew to include mediocre chocolate in heart-shaped boxes, teddy bears, fancy dinners and other gifts to express a deep, romantic connection.
The first mass production of Valentine’s Day lace-embossed cards, happened in 1847 in Massachusetts, while the heart-shaped boxes of chocolate were first produced by Cadbury in the 1860s.
The Greeting Card Association estimates 190 million cards are sent each year in the U.S. Average spending for the holiday also rises every year, growing from $108 per person in 2010 to $131 in 2013.
Allie Dina, a junior at USU, thinks all of it is unnecessary.
“It kind of sucks,” Dina said. “It’s treated as a day of love and giving, but I think that it should be like that every day.”
Dina is not exclusive in this mentality. In recent years, some have taken Valentine’s Day and reworked it to include celebrations for other relationships as well.
The day before Valentine’s Day, Feb. 13, is casually known as “Galentine’s Day,” a time dedicated to positive female friendships.
The holiday comes from an episode of “Parks and Recreation,” which originally aired on Feb. 11, 2010. In the episode, Amy Poehler’s character Leslie Knope celebrates her favorite holiday of the year.
“Every Feb. 13, my lady friends and I leave our husbands and our boyfriends at home, and we just come and kick it breakfast-style,” Knope said in the episode. “Ladies celebrating ladies. It’s like Lilith Fair, minus the angst, plus frittatas.”
Another popular variation of Valentine’s Day is “Singles Awareness Day,” celebrated on Feb. 15.
Although the abbreviation for Single’s Awareness Day is SAD, the unofficial holiday is actually intended to celebrate non-romantic relationships, such as those with family and platonic friends.
Dustin Barnes, a former student of Mississippi State University, is cited with creating the holiday in 2001. He said it came from a place of feeling isolated.
Barnes decided to invent a holiday in which he and his single friends could celebrate their relationships status together and chose Feb. 15, not only out of protest to the day of love, but also because they would be able to get candy and supplies at a huge markdown.
Dina does support these offshoots of Valentine’s Day, but still thinks that people shouldn’t need an excuse to show love.
“I think it’s cute that we’re finding time to support other types of relationships in our lives rather than just romantic relationships,” Dina said. “However, I still think that it should be an everyday type thing. Why do we need a reason to buy someone chocolates and tell them we love them?”
-Jared.Adams@usu.edu