History of Valentine's Day

Most Valentine’s Day history often begins with the feast of Lupercalia. The story of Lupercalia begins in the wilderness in ancient Rome. As wolves roamed over the countryside, the Roman god, Lupercus watched over the shepherds and their flocks. In his honor the shepherds held a feast in February of each year and called it the Lupercalia. The Lupercalia festival came to represent the time when Rome consisted of shepherds that lived on a hill now known as Palantine.

One of the customs during the Lupercalia festival was a lottery. The lives of young boys and girls were strictly separate. On the eve of the festival the names of Roman girls were written on slips of paper and placed into jars. Each young man drew a girl's name from the jar making the two partners for the duration of the festival. Sometimes the pairing of the children lasted an entire year, and often, they fell in love and later married. In 494 Pope Gelasius I recast this festival as a Christian feast day, declaring February fourteenth to be Saint Valentine’s Day.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, there were at least three early Christian saints named Valentine. One was a priest in Rome, another a bishop in Terni, and of a third Saint Valentine almost nothing is known except that he died in Africa. However, all three Valentines were said to have been martyred on February fourteenth.

Most scholars contend that Saint Valentine was a priest who attracted the disfavor of Roman emperor Claudius around 270. Claudius was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join the military and believed the reason was that Roman men did not want to leave their families. As a result, Claudius cancelled all marriages and engagements in Rome. Saint Valentine and Saint Marius aided the Christians and secretly married couples. Claudius had Valentine beaten and beheaded on February fourteenth in the year 270.

Another legend describes a story of Valentine imprisoned by Claudius. While in jail, Valentine fell in love with Claudius’s daughter. Before his execution, Valentine allegedly sent his lover a letter signed "from your Valentine."

However, the most realistic narrative of Saint Valentine focuses not on romance and love but religious persecution. Many historians argue that Valentine was martyred for refusing to renounce his religion. It was not until the fourteenth century that Valentine’s Day became definitively associated with love. According to UCLA medieval scholar Henry Ansgar Kelly, author of Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine, it was Chaucer who first linked Saint Valentine's Day with romance. In 1381, Chaucer composed a poem in honor of the engagement between England's Richard II and Anne of Bohemia. In "The Parliament of Fowls," the royal engagement, the mating season of birds, and Saint Valentine's Day are linked:

For this was on St. Valentine's Day,
When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate.

Over the centuries, the holiday evolved, and by the 18th century, gift-giving and exchanging hand-made cards on Valentine's Day had become common in England. Hand-made Valentine cards made of lace, ribbons, and featuring cupids and hearts eventually spread to the American colonies. The tradition of Valentine's cards did not become widespread in the United States, however, until the 1850s, when Esther A. Howland, a Mount Holyoke graduate and native of Worcester, Massachusettes, began mass-producing them. Today, the holiday has become a commercial success. According to the Greeting Card Association, 25% of all cards sent each year are Valentines.