The month of February is the shortest month but is filled with the most fun. Filled with love, gifts, flowers, and chocolates, many people celebrate February 14th, the beloved holiday better known as Valentine’s Day. Some buy gifts and spend time with their significant other and others celebrate with their closest friends or family. However, this holiday was not always a holiday of love though. With origins dating over a thousand years ago, where did this infamous holiday actually come from?
The holiday originally dates all the way back to the fifth century. Pope Gelasius I declared February 14th as “St. Valentine’s Day” back in 496 AD. It was said that Pope Gelasius I used this as a replacement for the Roman festival of Lupercalia. However, some historians say that there is little to no evidence to support that statement. The day was more factually established as a day of feasts. These feasts were to honor the life of the Christian Martyr by the same name, Saint Valentine, who was executed on February 14, 270 AD for disobeying a ban on marriage.
Some may ask, what is Lupercalia? Lupercalia was a Roman Pagan festival of fertility originally celebrated annually on February 15th. The name Lupercalia came from the Roman fertility god, Lupercus. While celebrating the festival, the ancient Romans would give sacrifices of dogs and male goats, hold feasts, and matchmake women with men by lottery. As Christianity began to rise, the traditions of this festival also began to change. Despite celebrating fertility, the festival did not celebrate romance.
It wasn’t until the fourteenth century that this day began to be a celebration of love. The love aspect became more popular with Geoffrey Chaucer published Parliament of Fowls in 1382. When the poem gained popularity and began circulating, European nobility began to send love notes to one another. They would send these notes during bird mating season which is infamously in the spring. A few centuries later, William Shakespeare published Hamlet which Hamlet’s wife sings a song stating “Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s Day…” This song is said to come from a commonly held folklore belief of the first woman to see a man on Valentine’s Day is his true love.
In the modern day, Valentine’s day is all about love. Couples give gifts, flowers, and chocolates. Everybody finds a way to celebrate whether single with friends or coupled up with a significant other. Valentine’s day has an interesting history and the process of modernizing has come a long way. Going from feasting to the current traditions, this day of love was not always as we thought of it to be.
