Valentine’s Day has been distorted into the day of love. Couples go out and watch movies and just spend some quality time together. In the beginning, that’s not what it was all about; there’s more to the story.
The history of Valentine’s Day is a mystery. We know that it contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. The Catholic Church has at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus; all of them were martyred.
There’s a legend saying that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. Emperor Claudius II concluded that single men made better soldiers, so he outlawed marriage for young men. This outraged Valentine; he performed secret marriages for young lovers. Claudius did eventually find out and ordered Valentine to be put to death.
More stories suggest Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured. According to one legend, Valentine sent the first “valentine” to a girl he fell in love with; she visited him during his imprisonment. It’s a myth that before he died he wrote her a letter signed “From your Valentine,” an expression that is still used today.
Another myth is the pagan festival which is in February. Some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February because that’s the anniversary of Valentine’s death. There are other people who claim it’s because the Christian church might have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February to Christianize the pagan celebration of Lupercalia.
To begin the festival, an order of Roman priests would go to a sacred cave and sacrifice a goat for fertility and a dog for purification. They would then strip the goat of its hide and dip it into sacrificial blood and put it on women. The women would welcome it because they believed it would make them more fertile in the coming year. Then the women would place their names in a big urn in the city. A guy would draw a name and whomever’s name he chose would be his partner for the year. Most of the time, this ended in marriage.
As we can see, there was more to Valentine’s Day than just love. Like all things, there is a beginning to how something started. Today we don’t notice that, which isn’t bad, so make sure you show your significant other how much you appreciate him or her! If you don’t have a significant other, show your friends how much you appreciate them!