Valentine's Day Celebration

Valentine's Day Celebration, The History of This Lover's Day Celebration

By Sania S. Titus

Many believe that Valentine’s Day is named after Saint Valentine of Rome, a beloved martyr who was executed on February 14th in 3rd century A.D. However, there were actually several men known as “St. Valentine” who were executed during the reign of Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus. During a time when Christians were persecuted often, the execution of religious advocates known as martyrs grew. The stories of religious heroism by St. Valentine were honored by the Catholic Church with the celebration of St. Valentine’s Day.

    The two most famous St. Valentines were a Roman priest and Italian bishop. The priest named Valentinus was arrested for his beliefs and put into custody. Valentinus made a bargain with the man who was guarding him, that if he could cure his foster-daughter of blindness he would convert to Christianity. The legend says that Valentinus was able to make the girl see and the guard and his whole family became Christians. When the emperor heard the news, he ordered them all to be executed.

       The second Valentinus got into a similar situation; he debated with a potential convert and ended up healing the man’s son. The same emperor Gothicus executed him as well as the man he converted. Some believe these men are two interpretations of the same story, however, no one knows who the original St. Valentine was. As time went on the legend of these martyrs developed into a Christian celebration of their death. It’s believed that the Catholic Church may have established St. Valentine’s Day originally in order to honor these men, who they believed to be martyrs.

The First Valentine

In medieval legends and what is often portrayed in modern media, St. Valentine was secretly marrying couples to protect young men from going to war. Other stories say that St. Valentine fell in love with the blind girl he had healed and that he wrote her the first “valentine” while in prison – a letter which he allegedly signed “From your Valentine,” an expression that is still in use today. However, there is no historical evidence backing these stories.

    Lupercalia

Others think the Christian church decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in order to cover up the pagan celebration of Lupercalia, also known as the fertility festival.

Lupercalia was originally a sacred gathering of Roman priests that went on from February 13th to the 15th. The pagan ritual included sacrificing a dog and a goat and walking through the streets covering women with the hide for what they believed promoted fertility. An equally strange part of the festival was the tradition of women placing their names into an urn for bachelors to pick from. The woman’s name they drew would be their match for the duration of the festival, and often paired couples would marry!

      How Was Valentine’s Day First Celebrated?

So what is the real story of Valentine’s Day? Lupercalia was eventually outlawed. However, at the end of the 5th century, Pope Gelantis declared February 14th as “the feast of St. Valentine,” ridding the day of the unruly festival. Whether this action was to cover up Lupercalia or to honor the religious heroism of St. Valentine is argued by historians to this day.