Love it or hate it, February 14 is celebrated by millions of people annually. Often referred to as a "Authentication Holiday," Valentine's Day is largely associated with sappy greeting cards, eye-shaped boxes of chocolates, rose-filled bouquets, and other so-chosen symbols of love. Of course, it didn't start out this style. So, what are the origins of Valentine's Day — and why has the vacation endured?
The Pagan Origins of Valentine's Day
Like and so many of our modern-day celebrations, Valentine's Day may date back to a pagan festival, at to the lowest degree in part. That celebration was known equally Lupercalia, a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, and Rome's founders, Romulus and Remus. Held on the ides of February, Lupercalia was meant to usher in the spring — a time that's most oft associated with fertility and birth.
So, did Lupercalia involve chocolates and center-shaped sweets? Not exactly. To kick things off, an social club of Roman priests known as the Luperci would gather in a sacred cavern where, co-ordinate to fable, Rome's founders were cared for by a wolf. They would then sacrifice a goat and a dog, animals that represent fertility and purification respectively. The caprine animal'southward hide was then dipped in blood, taken to the fields and, finally, given to the Roman women. According to History, "Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because information technology was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year." All of this ended in a lottery-like matchmaking arrangement to pair the urban center's immature women and men together. A little more involved than swiping left, huh?
By the end of the 400s A.D., Pope Gelasius put an cease to the festival, noting that its infidel roots were in directly opposition to Christianity. In an attempt to Christianize the vacation, Pope Gelasius decided to replace Lupercalia with a Christian feast solar day. During the Eye Ages, folks would associate this feast solar day with love and romance, especially in the wake of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Parlement of Foules, a poem about birds finding their mates.
Then, how did this banquet mean solar day go known equally Valentine'due south Day? Well, virtually Christian banquet days are associated with a saint and, as you might be able to gauge, Saint Valentine is primarily known as the patron saint of lovers. According to the Catholic Church, at that place were at to the lowest degree three martyred saints named Valentine or Valentinus, so it'south difficult to determine for whom the day was named.
One popular legend suggests that when Emperor Claudius Two of Rome outlawed wedlock for the young men in his army, a priest named Valentine performed marriages in secret. Eventually, he was found out and Claudis sentenced him to expiry. Another Valentine, this one a bishop, was too put to death by Claudius the second, though little is known nearly that potential namesake.
Mayhap the most popular legend associated with Valentine's 24-hour interval tells the story of a man who wanted to help Christian people escape Roman prisons. In this telling, the imprisoned Valentine sent the beginning "valentine" greeting to a young adult female who had visited him. Information technology is said that before his expiry, he signed a letter to her "From your Valentine." Of class, which version of Valentine is actually the day's namesake doesn't quite matter as much as what the figure stands for — beloved, empathy and sacrifice.
How Did Valentine's Day Become the Holiday We Know Today?
Apart from Valentine's letter of legend, the oldest known valentine came most in 1415 when Charles, Duke of Orleans, wrote a honey poem to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Shortly subsequently, King Henry V allegedly hired a ghost author to compose a valentine to his love. But when did the holiday go what we know today?
Observed in the United States, Canada, United mexican states, France, Australia and the United Kingdom, modernistic Valentine'due south Day as we know information technology was first celebrated in the 17th or 18th centuries, with folks exchanging handwritten notes and pocket-size tokens. By the 1800s, Richard Cadbury, the founder of the Cadbury chocolate company, began the practice of gifting boxes of chocolate on Valentine'due south Solar day in the U.K.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., Esther A. Howland, the so-called "Mother of the Valentine," offset sold mass-produced valentines in the 1840s. And the residue, as they say, is history. These days, the Greeting Carte du jour Association estimates that 145 1000000 people send Valentine's Day cards each year — and that's non including all those cards kids trade at school. Additionally, the National Retail Foundation projected that Americans would spend a staggering $27.4 billion in 2020 on Valentine's-related items.
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