By Hayley White

Reading time: 12 minutes 

For those who have a beau, or a belle, Saint Valentine’s Day is a day to spoil your partner with gifts and shower them with love. But Saint Valentine’s Day was not originally a sweet celebration of love and happiness. Rather, it was the day on which one particular saint was hailed as a martyr. The origin of Saint Valentine is not very well known, but how on earth did the good Saint become such an icon for romance and how did his celebration turn into what it is today?

Considering that pagans were stereotypically painted as sex-crazed heathens, it is not surprising that they had their own version of Valentine’s Day. Lupercalia, also called dies Februatus, or Februare, was celebrated on February 15^th. Lupercalia was an ancient festival full of sex, violence, and fertility. At the heart of it, it was a festival of purification, since dies Februatus meant “purified day”. Lupercalia was also a springtime festival and, as such, was a celebration aimed at promoting the health and fertility of women, men, beasts, and the earth.

Lupercalia was so well known and such a popular festival that it persisted through a century of Christian rule, even when other Roman holidays disappeared. Because of its popularity, Lupercalia was one of the main pagan celebrations that the Church desperately sought to get rid of. However, Lupercalia continued well into the birth of Christianity and ended sometime around the 5^th century AD.

Saint Valentine’s history potentially comes from a couple of origins. He was either a priest of Rome or a bishop of Terni, a town in central Italy. The Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox churches all recognise Saint Valentine and hold him in high esteem with a fair amount of significance. His patronage included engaged couples, beekeepers, happily married couples, the mentally ill, and the epileptic, to name a few.

There are a fair few stories that link Saint Valentine to lovers and romance, though none have been proven as completely true.

Christianity was on the rise when the Roman Emperor Claudius II was in power at the time. Claudius was called “The Cruel” for his many military endeavours, which included a lot of drafting. One way to escape drafting for the army was to be married, since only single men were forced into service. So Claudius temporarily outlawed marriage. In defiance, a young priest called Valentine (Latin Valentinus) performed secret marriages in the night. He was so popular that young people would visit him, offering him flowers and slipping him notes praising his work of saving love over war – those messages were believed to be the first ever ‘valentines’. The story was given more spice when someone later added that Valentinus himself had a love affair with the jailer’s daughter and left a note with her signed: “From your Valentine”.

Eventually, he was caught, imprisoned, and sentenced to death. Valentine was martyred on the 14^th of February 269 AD. but Saint Valentine’s Day, known officially as The Feast of Saint Valentine, was not established by Pope Gelasius 1 until 496 AD, over 200 years later.

The shift from beloved saint to love’s poster boy happened sometime in the late 14^th century. If the stories about Valentine’s own escapades had not influenced the spreading of romance in early Saint Valentine’s Day celebrations, then the writings of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and other contemporaries of their time certainly did. In the Northern Hemisphere, Valentine’s Day sits on the cusp of winter into spring, so it was very easy for these writers to associate Saint Valentine with romance, lovers, spring festivities, rebirth, and relationships. From then on, it was a common trend in 15^th-century literature to connect the holiday to love.

Lovers have been exchanging gifts since the 17^th and 18^th century. Back then, they were handmade goodies, from little lace-paper cards to poetic verses or epigrams. By the end of the 18^th century, lovers began making more substantial presents, like puzzle purses and fancy cutwork with hearts, birds, and flowers. There were elaborate, handmade love tokens and forget-me-nots, mementos, and other emblems. As time went on and people continued making handmade gifts, manufacturers realised that there was a massive market for them and built their designs off these folk artifacts.

It was not until the 1800s that Saint Valentine’s Day (shortened to Valentine’s Day) was reborn and reinvented as a truly commercial holiday. An estimated 200,000 valentines circulated annually in London mid-1820s and by the late 1840s the number had doubled. It had more than doubled again by the 1860s. Valentine’s Day had been mostly ignored by America, but after the holiday reached American shores during the gift-giving boom of the 1840s to 1860s, it was established as a lasting American tradition as well. Valentine’s Day became so popular people called it a ‘social disease’ that was highly anticipated year after year.

One concern about the increasing commercialism and consumerism of Valentine’s Day was that it took away the sincerity, authenticity, and self-expression of romance and love. This is a concern that has trickled over into today’s thinking as well; Valentine’s Day is just another day to buy gifts for your significant other. On average, individuals spend USD$165 every year for Valentine’s Day. In the US alone $4.3 billion is spent on sparkling wine in the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, 50 million pounds of chocolate are purchased, and another $4.3 billion is spent on flowers. Over 62% of couples say that they feel obliged to buy their loved one a gift and a big majority of people believe that the day is just one big money-maker for businesses.

Regardless, the gift- giving tradition stretches all the way across the world. In Western culture, it is common for a boyfriend to gift his girlfriend a present, but in Japan it is the other way around. This gendered gift-giving practice – so different to the Western world – has ancient origins. The Kojiki or The Record of Ancient Matters, written in 712, tells the story of how the sun goddess Amaterasu, a supreme Shinto deity, gave her grandson Ninigi-no-mikoto three imperial regalia: Yasuka curved beads, a mirror, and the Kusanagi sword. Based on that legend alone, the cultural rule of women being the gift-givers was created.

Valentine’s Day is unique in Japan for that exact reason. The holiday was introduced to a small population in Japan in 1936 with little success. It was reintroduced to the wider Japanese area in the late ‘50s and still did poorly. That was until it began being marketed in a way that convinced Japanese women that it was a day to convey their romantic feelings to men. It was then that Valentine’s Day officially caught on. To balance out the female to male gendered gift-giving, the ‘80s saw the introduction of White Day; a special day held a month later wherein men can give a (generally larger) gift back to their Valentine. This day has continued to be celebrated to this day.

Other places around the world started celebrating Valentine’s Day a little bit later than anyone else. And by a little bit I mean the year 2000, in Egypt’s case. Egyptians call the day id al-hubb, al-falantayn, or the holiday of love. Many people meet in the most romantic spots around their cities and lovers take a lovely stroll along the Nile. They associate red as the main colour for the celebration and many dress in this colour; women, especially, wear bright headscarves emblazoned with the English word “LOVE”. Almost all of their Valentine’s Day memorabilia is in English and on the evening of the 14^th, restaurants and concert venues hold events specifically to celebrate.

The fatwā is a religious body in Egypt who condemns the holiday. The fatwā says that it is a bad innovation, bid’a sayyi’a, and promotes passion and desire as well as occupies the mind with shallow thoughts. Despite this, celebrations continue to be popular.

Some countries do not allow Valentine’s Day at all and people can get in a lot of trouble for commemorating it. In Malaysia, Muslims make up two thirds of the population of around 28 million people. They are prohibited from celebrating Valentine’s Day. In 2016, 80 Muslims were arrested by the Islamic morality police for celebrating the day (Fact or fiction: Valentine’s Day is banned in some countries, 2017). Similarly, in Saudi Arabia, where women and men sit separately in restaurants and public displays of affection are taboo, the event is banned by the religious police. Five Saudis were sentenced to a total of 39 years in prison as well as 4,500 lashes between them because they had been found dancing on Valentine’s Day with six women to whom they were not related.

So, while we may roll our eyes at the red roses and little foil-wrapped hearts, Saint Valentine’s Day is definitely something we take for granted in the Western world. Maybe this year, forego the candy and the cards and do something from the heart. Write a poem, make a little homemade gift. Give your partner something with meaning this year. I think we all know how important staying connected is, especially through a worldwide pandemic. Spread love, joy, and happiness this Valentine’s Day.

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