The Feast of Saint Valentine the Presbyter, otherwise known as Valentine’s Day
Ok, so everyone knows what Valentine’s day is right? I mean it is a day for celebrating those you love and the concept of Romantic Love isn’t it?
But what do we really know about this Holiday and the person it was named for?
Shall we start with Saint Valentine? Honestly about all we know is that there were one or more people by the name of Valentine in Roman times that were considered martyrs. Valentine was actually apparently a very popular name in the late Roman Empire. Looking for the earliest records of when this Saint was recognized by the church we find that the Feast of Saint Valentine was established in 496 ce where Valentine was included among those “… whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God.” Basically even that far back, nobody knew who this person was or what they had done but only that the name was revered. So basically we only know that there may have been one or more Martyrs named Valentine.
Perhaps we can find some clues to what Valentine’s day is in this Feast Day that was established. Surely it was intended as a day to celebrate love. While there is some theory that the day may have been placed on February 14th to be in the middle of the Pagan holiday of Lupercalia which was a fertility festival. That connection is much disputed and honestly fertility isn’t exactly the same as Romantic Love.
Some say that the first tie of Saint Valentine’s day to Romantic Love was done in the late 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer in his poem Parlement of Foules. That is a subject of some debate as well though and many feel that the poem is being misinterpreted. The earliest, mostly uncontested tie between Saint Valentine’s Day and Romantic Love that I can find is references to a “High Court of Love” that was established in Paris on February 14th 1400. The thing is the court was to deal with love contracts, betrayals and violence towards women. About the only thing romantic about it I can find is that the judges were chosen by the women based on poetry reading.
While there are a few mentions of Valentine’s Day in poems and literary works, the holiday as we know it is recognized to have begun in the 1840’s in the United States. In fact the first mass produced Valentine’s Day card was created in 1847. While this may seem like a long time to many, honestly is 160 years all that much considering the history of the day goes back over 1500 years?
Even better, the celebration of the day was pretty much limited to pretty cards and bad poetry until the mid 20th century when the celebration started to spread to gifts and such. One might ask why such a simple holiday suddenly became about buying things. One might suppose that it had something to do with some sort of marketing scheme by the florists and candy companies. I will leave that for the reader to think on though.
Ultimately what we have is a Roman Catholic feast day celebrating one or more Martyrs named Valentine that was placed in the middle of a Pagan Fertility festival and had no romantic connotations until over 1000 years after it was created. Now it is the biggest day for the sales of flowers, candies, cards, and other gifts meant to show someone how much you Love them and if you don’t spend enough, obviously you don’t love them very much.
Absurd?