Lifestyle Insight Magazine

Although Valentine’s Day is often linked to romance, the celebration wasn’t exactly romantic in its beginnings.Even while Valentine’s Day is today associated with gifts, kissing, and securing a reservation for dinner, the holiday’s beginnings are not nearly as romantic.Pope Gelasius proclaimed February 14th to be St. Valentine’s Day at the end of the 5th century, and ever since, people have celebrated the day, however it was typically more religious than romantic.

Valentine’s Day is a set day on the calendar that was once confused with Lupercalia, an ancient Roman celebration observed in mid-February. Some historians think this is how the event came to symbolise love. Lupercalia was a fertility celebration that might have involved pairing men and women by drawing names out of a jar. The marriage of the god Zeus and the goddess Hera was celebrated in the middle of winter in ancient Greece. Early Christians, for the most part, chose to celebrate holidays on days that were in line with already-established festivals and celebrations (such as Christmas and the winter solstice). Accordingly, Valentine’s Day was observed on February 14th, and Lupercalia on February 15th.

In the Catholic faith, St. Valentine’s Day was introduced to the liturgical calendar approximately 500 AD, making it a feast day. You guessed it: Valentine-named martyred saints were honoured on this day. Three separate saints named Valentine or Valentinus are honoured by various traditions; nonetheless, the feast day was dropped from the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar in 1969 due to the lack of information available about these men and the divergent accounts of the St. Valentine Day narrative. The mythology of Saint Valentine has multiple versions, despite the fact that nothing concrete is known about the actual history of the Saint Valentines who served as the inspiration for the celebration. According to a tale, Saint Valentine was put to death by Roman Emperor Claudius II for refusing to become a pagan.
He was able to treat his jailer’s daughter miraculously before he was put to death, and she and his family later became Christians. According to a different tradition, the real namesake of the event is a bishop named Saint Valentine of Terni, who was similarly put to death.

However, some claim that Saint Valentine was a Roman priest who performed marriages for soldiers who were not allowed to get married due to an emperor’s decree that married soldiers did not make good warriors and that young men were therefore not allowed to get married. This is how Saint Valentine came to be associated with a romantic holiday. Soldiers were able to identify Saint Valentine thanks to the love symbol—a ring with the image of a Cupid on it. Additionally, he distributed paper hearts to remind Christians of their love for God—a move that predated greeting cards.

Saint Valentine became recognised as the patron saint of love as a result of this tradition. In the Saint Valentine prayer, lovers ask Saint Valentine to unite them and help them remember their commitment to God.

Although the story of Saint Valentine laid the foundation for the celebration of romantic love on this day, historians believe that a poem written in 1375 by the mediaeval author Geoffrey Chaucer cemented the relationship between Saint Valentine and love. This poem is credited with giving rise to the “modern” Valentine’s Day celebration, which honours our romantic relationship with a significant other.

Chaucer lived in the Middle Ages, the height of courtly love, when love was expressed in poetry, music, paintings, and other wide, romantic declarations that honoured a partnership. Poetry and songs of the time began to employ the term “valentine” to refer to a lover by the end of the fifteenth century, and in England, a book titled The Young Man’s Valentine Writer was produced in the eighteenth century.

Valentine’s Day as we know it began in the middle of the 1800s when mass-produced paper Valentine’s cards began to be made (but homemade card ideas are still worthwhile to try).