History of Valentine’s Day

Posted by Benji Riggins on February 9, 2009 under Interesting Info | Be the First to Comment

Be My Valentine

Years before there was a Saint Valentine to spice things up and bring some passion into the season, mid-February was an important date for lovers. As far back as 400 years BCE, ancient Romans took part in an annual lottery in the name of one of their gods: Lupercus. Young women’s names were written down and put inside a box and drawn blindly by eager young men. The ‘winners’ then found themselves legally paired for a year.

600 years later, the militaristic emperor Claudius II put a stop to marriage for young men — because he took it into his head that single youths made better soldiers.

An early Christian priest, Valentine, dared to disagree with Claudius and went against the law, carrying on marrying young people until Claudius dicovered his disloyalty and first imprisoned him, and finally caused him to be martyred for his faith on February 24th, 270.

The story goes that while he was locked up, Valentine fell in love with his guard’s daughter and after he was taken to his death, he left her a message signed, ‘From your Valentine.’

Taking Valentine’s name in vain, the by now established Christian Church, in AD 496, decided to finally abolish the pagan ancient lottery held to worship Lupercus the pagan god and so changed the rules:

After that, either gender would randomly choose from the box, but now they wouldn’t get the expected year of ‘marriage’ (or, indeed, the more earthy benefits that were implied), they now had to pick out a Saint whose character they had to spend the next year emulating.

How frustrated and cheated the youth of ancient Rome must have felt having their traditions upturned!

This new ‘celebration’ day was called after Saint Valentine whose selection, 226 years after his death, was in order to usurp the pagan god than to signify love.

As politicians through the ages often forget, public memory was stronger than the latest political ideas — especially when as unpopular as this and Saint Valentine’s name remained linked with love and lovers. Young Roman men, missing their traditional sweepstake, began instead giving notes to the women they fancied on February 14th.

So it was that the modern habit of distributing and receiving Valentine cards and messages was started over 1500 years ago!

The first known ‘modern’ card that is still in existence is owned by the British Museum. This first proper Valentines card was sent by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife in 1415. He was held captive in the Tower of London at the time and so outpourings of love were probably quite heightened!

Five hundred years ago the Bishop of Geneva tried to reinstate the annual Saint’s name lottery, but the people were not much interested. February 14th was by then too firmly associated with lovers for the Church to successfully interfere.

In 1797 a British publisher, who would have done very well in modern Internet times, published a guidebook called ‘The Young Man’s Valentine Writer’ which offered scores of suggestions of Valentines messages for the creatively challenged.

Anonymous Valentines cards all started in Victorian times. Those outwardly straight-laced folks privately adored anything sensual and passionate, but publicly were obliged to display a show of respectful purity. Hence, the messages in Victorian cards became really quite filthy, while the senders were still able to hide from behind their self-imposed anonymity.

The first seller of Valentine’s cards in the U.S., Esther Holland was able to charge up to $35 for each card. That was a fortune in 1870!

Finally, we still write kisses with the letter ‘x’ because in days of illiteracy, a person would ‘sign’ their name with their mark — a cross. To convey the effect of an oath, people would kiss the cross they had drawn — in the same way that they would kiss the Bible. Unsurprisingly the hand-drawn X and the kiss became inextricably entwined — how poetic.

Have a love-filled Valentine’s day! X