History of Valentine's Day

I was doing some research on the topic of Valentine's Day and found myself reading several accounts related to the history of this holiday. I decided to write my own account below for your reading pleasure:

There are many tales of how Valentine’s Day originated. As with any historical date, it is most likely that a combination of events and people helped to mold our modern version of this lovers’ holiday. The farthest back account was during the time of the Roman Empire. In ancient Rome, a festival called Lupercalia took place each year on February 15th. The night before the festival was to begin, the names of all the young Roman girls were written down and placed in jars. The young boys then drew a name out of the jar. That boy was then paired up with the girl whose name he withdrew from the jar for the duration of the festival. In some instances, the pairing would last for the entire year after the festival. Over that year, the boy and girl often fell in love, and would later get married. This is where our modern tradition of ‘picking’ a Valentine might have originated.
As Christianity spread, pagan holidays were virtually erased by replacing them or renaming them. In the case of The Roman’s Lupercalia, Pope Gelasius renamed the pagan festival as a feast day of the Roman martyr Saint Valentine and moved the day to February 14th. Historians, however, aren’t clear on which of the three saints by that name that Pope Gelasius was honoring. Most scholars will argue that it was the St. Valentine whom was a Roman priest in the third century during the reign of the Roman Emperor, Claudius II.
Claudius II was not a very well liked ruler at the time. He believed in a strong army to fortify his weakening empire. He struggled to increase his ranks and realized that men who had a family would not want to leave their wives and children to fight. To overcome this stumbling block he decided to ban marriages all together, eliminating this need to protect one’s family as young men would no longer be allowed to create a family. Of course this did not go over well with the Roman people and that is where Valentine came into the picture. Upon seeing the dissatisfaction of his fellow Romans, Valentine decided he would secretly join lovers in the holy sacrament of marriage. Unfortunately, Claudius was somehow tipped off to these secret nuptials and had Valentine arrested, and sentenced to death.
Once in prison, Valentine had many people visit the prison to show their support for his cause. One account even says that these visitors would throw cards and flowers up to his window, perhaps another origin of our modern Valentine’s Day rituals. Most accounts also speak of a young girl who visited Valentine often. She was the daughter of a jail guard, and she was blind by some accounts. One Catholic legend says that the guard brought his daughter to Valentine, asking him to restore her sight. He succeeded by using his strong and powerful faith in God. On the day of his execution, February 14, 270 AD, the Roman priest left her a message and signed it ‘From your Valentine.’ Eventually Valentine was canonized and became St. Valentine. On his feast day, Romans held festivals where the young men would pass handwritten notes to the women they were courting or wished to court. At some time in history, it became common to sign these notes just as Valentine signed his, ‘From your Valentine.’ This phrase now appears on thousands upon thousands of greeting cards during the month of February.

The history of this holiday has a large break in time following St. Valentine’s execution and the initial start of festivals honoring him. It wasn’t until eleven centuries later when the next date appears on the timeline. In the 14th Century Geoffrey Chaucer, the great English author included references to Valentine’s Day and love in his poems and writings. He is attributed as the first person to officially relate Valentine’s Day to true romance. Scholars say that prior to this time, the feast of Saint Valentine was based on Christian love (Agape) versus passionate love or true romance referenced by Chaucer.

Through the Middle Ages the Catholic Church attempted to squash the romantic references of Saint Valentine’s Day, but to no avail. Romantic exchanges were made for centuries until finally in the 18th Century gift-giving became part of the February 14th ritual. Beautiful hand-made cards containing intricate lace, hearts and cupids were exchanged in England and throughout Europe. When the American colonies were first established, this tradition of exchanging Valentines continued.

As is the American way, a woman by the name of Esther Howland disovered a great way to achieve the American dream. In the 1840’s she was the first person to create commercially produced Valentine’s Day greeting cards in the U.S. Her creations earned her the title, ‘Mother of the Valentine.’ She is credited with several innovations related to Valentine’s design including using a colorful piece of paper behind the lacey overlays, and the use of a three dimensional shadow box design used towards the latter part of her 30 year career. In 1881 she sold her company to the George C. Whitney company which also produced elaborate Valentines until 1942.

To bring things up to current history, it is interesting to look at the Hallmark greeting card company. Joyce C. Hall, a native of Nebraska interestingly enough, started his business with two shoeboxes full of picture postcards that he attempted to sell to dealers after moving to Kansas City in 1910. When he mailed out his first batch of cards, he was met with some disgruntled dealers. Some returned nasty notes along with the postcards while others just kept the cards without remitting payment. However, enough dealers found the cards good enough to sell and remitted the requested payment to Hall, earning him his first $200. After a few short years, Joyce C. Hall had made a name for himself in the picture postcard business. He brought his two brothers into business with him and expanded the company and its offerings to include greeting cards, Valentines, and Christmas cards. He obviously knew what he is doing as today, almost one hundred years later, his business is still thriving with over ten million Hallmark cards being sold every year. Approximately twenty-five percent of those cards are Valentine’s Day Cards!
So now when you go to the card store and pick out a romantic Valentine and sign it, ‘From your Valentine,’ you will understand the origins of this 18 Century old tradition. ~ Happy Valentine’s Day from Beyond the Vine