A Brief History of Valentine's Day
Whether you like it or not, Valentine’s Day is one of those holidays you just can’t escape, dominating your surroundings with sickly sweet love hearts and flowers in stores and on adverts everywhere.
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With the UK reportedly spending a heart-stopping £620 million on Valentine’s gifts in 2017, it’s safe to say that nearly everyone is on board with when the big day is and what it’s all about. But have you ever stopped to wonder why it’s on that date? Who is this mysterious St Valentine, why does he have anything to do with love and where did all these traditions come from? We’re here to give you a little lesson on this centuries-old holiday, dating right back from ancient Roman rituals all the way to the big fluffy pink teddy bears of today.
Since the idea all started nearly 2000 years ago, there has always been a bit of a dispute over who St Valentine actually was. The most popular legend claims that during the third century AD, Roman Emperor Claudius II had banned marriage for young men as he thought it made them bad soldiers. Valentine thought this was unfair, so he broke the rules and carried on performing marriage ceremonies for young couples in secret.
When Claudius found out, he threw Valentine in jail and sentenced him to death. Apparently, Valentine ended up falling in love with the jailer’s daughter, and while in prison he wrote and sent a note to his beloved, signing it “From your Valentine”. It is said that the Romans put him to death on February 14th, and so the legend was born.
Ancient Roman-Pagan holiday of LupercaliaThe celebration part of the holiday originates from Lupercalia, a Roman-pagan holiday for fertility held around the middle of February, officially the start of Springtime. Part of the celebratory rituals involved boys and girls drawing names from a box and being paired off during the festival, and often this would result in marriage. However, as was the case with many Christian holidays we recognise now, Pope Gelasius didn’t want to miss out on all the fun so he decided to declare February 14th as “St Valentine’s Day”, a Christian feast that commemorated St Valentine, too. Therefore the first official Valentine’s day that was ever celebrated was in the year 496 AD!
Gradually, St. Valentine’s name began to be used by people universally when expressing their feelings to their loved ones. The first recorded ‘Valentine’s note’ was sent by Charles the Duke of Orleans to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt – he addressed it to “My very gentle Valentine”.
By 1601 AD St Valentine’s Day was so cemented into popular culture that even Shakespeare penned it into Ophelia’s lament in Hamlet: “To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day/All in the morning betime/And I a maid at your window/To be your Valentine.”
The passing of love notes, a precursor to the Valentine’s card as we know it, became popular in the 1500s, and by the late 1700s commercially printed cards were being produced, with early versions made of lace and paper.
Vintage Valentine's cardThe real commercialisation and popularisation of Valentine’s cards in the US is all thanks to a lady named Esther Howland from Massachusetts. During the 1850s Valentine’s cards were often really expensive so she decided to try her hand at making her own at an affordable price. Her business blew up, and after selling it on in the late 1880s, The Whitney Co. would go on to become the largest Valentine’s day card manufacturer, paving the way for companies like Hallmark to dominate the market later on - and voila! The market worked its way towards Valentine’s Day as we know it today.
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