Saint Valentine’s Day

VALENTINE’S DAY IS the day of love. More than any other day of the year, romantic couples shower their better half with gifts and tokens of appreciation.

Much about Valentine’s Day is well known. The handwritten cards, chocolate hearts, and red roses are all staples of the annual tradition, recognized easily at any convenience store. However, much about the holiday and how it came to be remains a mystery, details lost to time and transformed as romantics retold history.

Why do we celebrate Valentine’s Day?

Was Valentine’s Day inspired by a party, an execution, or a poem? Historians aren’t sure.The earliest possible origin story of Valentine’s Day is the pagan holiday Lupercalia. Occurring for centuries in the middle of February, the holiday celebrates fertility. Men would strip naked and sacrifice a goat and dog. Young boys would then take strips of hide from the sacrificed animals and use it to whip young women, to promote fertility. Lupercalia was popular and one of the few pagan holidays still celebrated 150 years after Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire. When Pope Gelasius came to power in the late fifth century he put an end to Lupercalia. Soon after, the Catholic church declared February 14 to be a day of feasts to celebrate the martyred Saint Valentine.