Every February 14th, the world experiences a day centered around love.
Hate it or love it, our social media is filled with appreciative posts about significant others, and rose sales soar to an all-time high.
Massive amounts of chocolate are consumed, by singles and couples alike, and dating apps see levels of use that bring them near to crashing.
All this may be true, but what are the origins of the day of love, and has it always been this way? In this article, we take a look at the history of Valentine’s Day, to see what it’s all about.
There are various possibilities, which we go through in turn.
Lupercalia
One possible origin of Valentine’s Day lies in the pagan holiday that celebrates fertility, a holiday called Lupercalia.
Animals would be sacrificed by the men, traditionally a dog and a goat. Boys would then use the strips of hide from these sacrifices to whip women, all in the name of increasing fertility.
It was a widely celebrated holiday and was still celebrated until the fifth century, long after Christianity had become the norm across the Roman Empire.
Pope Gelasius
Pope Gelasius clearly thought the holiday sacrilegious, and at the end of the fifth century banned Lupercalia.
Not long after, February 14th was declared by the Catholic church to be a day of celebration for Saint Valentine.
This feast was most probably created to appease those who were upset at the highly popular festival being banned.
Essentially, the festival was renamed by the head of the Christian church, bringing it under their control and ceasing it from being considered a notorious pagan ritual.
Chaucer
The link between Valentine’s Day and the current romantic holiday we celebrate in modern terms was still tenuous at this point, and wouldn’t be created in the way we know it today for roughly another 800 years, by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer.
Some argue that in his poem The Parlement of Foules, he was the first to draw the modern-day connection between Saint Valentine and the romantic spirit, perhaps by chance, with mid-February coinciding with when European birds tend to begin mating.
Forms of celebration
Today, people traditionally celebrate with flowers, chocolate, jewellery, and cute handwritten cards.
The first Valentine’s Day card is thought to have been written by the Duke of Orleans in 1415, who wrote it to his wife while he was locked in the Tower of London.
It wouldn’t be for another 500 years, in the early 1900s, until Valentine’s Day cards would be mass-produced, fully entering popular culture in the modern form we know it today.
Whether you’re a fan of the holiday or not, it clearly has a long and interesting history, and has come a long way from animal sacrifice!
If you’re stuck on what to actually get your loved one for Valentine’s day and like to plan far in advance, then sites like Adults Toy Guide are ideal for a bit of a..well..different gift!