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The Origins of Valentine's Day

by Neighborhood-Kids.com2/12/2008 4:20:08 PM

When you’re a kid, Valentine’s Day is one of those great occurrences where adults let you eat candy and have a party at school for no good reason. On top of all the candy and sugary sweets, you get to make cards with glitter and markers and all kinds of fun, messy stuff. When you’re six-years-old, life doesn't really get any better.

St. Valentine, as depicted in a 14th century French manuscript.

But what is the origin for these wacky traditions? How did the veneration of early Christian martyrs become a holiday where kids across the world trade cards and candy in their classrooms? It’s a little bizarre, but an interesting history lesson too.

On February 14th, the Catholic Church honors the eleven different saints named Valentine, although which one specifically provided the back story for our modern Valentine’s celebration is ambiguous. One of the most popular legends goes that Valentine was imprisoned by Emperor Claudius II in Rome during the third century. What Valentine did to offend the emperor is also unclear; some myths say that he tried to convert the pagan ruler while other stories suggest that Valentine performed secret marriage ceremonies after they had been outlawed by Claudius.  While he was in prison, Valentine fell in love with the jailor’s daughter and allegedly wrote her a love note. He signed it, “From your Valentine.”

Some historians speculate that the church chose to celebrate Valentine’s Day in the middle of February to defuse the rituals associated with the annual pagan festival, Lupercalia, which had more to do with fertility rites than romantic love. Still, this connection to ancient Roman traditions could account for the popularity of Cupid, the Roman god of love, as a symbol for the modern holiday.

Cupid is still a popular symbol of love and Valentine's Day.

It wasn’t until the Middle Ages that the “romantic” stories about Valentine were popularized by poets, like Geoffrey Chaucer, in the tradition of “courtly love.” One of the oldest surviving valentines is a poem by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife from the fifteenth-century. The tradition of giving friends and loved ones small tokens or handwritten notes on this saint’s day became popular throughout England for the next 300 years.

The commercialization of Valentine’s Day really took off in the late eighteenth century. With improvements in printing and cheaper postage, ready-made cards became easy to send and receive. Esther A. Howland sold the first mass-produced valentine cards in America in the 1840s. Since then, the sale of Valentine’s Day cards (as well as flowers, chocolate, and diamonds) has made the celebration of a third-century martyr a multi-billion dollar industry around the world.