History of Valentine’s Day

By Jeremy McDonald

Valentine’s Day has a different meaning to all different ages.

For kids; making paper Valentine’s for one another is a common theme.  For teenagers, it’s about giving flowers, candy and a poem into that special someone’s locker.  For adults; it features a romance-like dinner with a romance walk somewhere.

For me, I was never that big with Valentine’s Day.  I thought it was over-commercialized with commercials, ads and so on.  But after doing some research I found out one thing and has made me think about switching that though.

Valentine’s Day hasn’t always been romantic, and here’s why.

It’s started with two Christian martys name Valentine, one was a priest in Rome, the other, a bishop in Terni, Italy.  Before moving on a martys, is a person who is persecution, and many were put to death, for refusing to renounce, or accept a way, i.e. religion.  Both were alive during the second and third centuries.

History stats that one of the St. Valentines met face-to-face with then-Roman Emperor Cladius II.  Cladius II had tried to convert Valentine to the Roman paganism in order to avoid certain death; Valentine resisted and tried to convert the Emperor to Christianity.  Through the deliberations, St. Valentine was sentenced to death.

But, before his execution, St. Valentine had pulled a miracle by helping his jailer’s daughter with her blindness and curing it.

Valentine, and it happen that the other Valentine too, was buried on February 14^th.

During this time, the only connection to romance with the timeframe; was the ancient Roman pastoral Festival of Lopercalia; which celebrated health and fertility to help purify the city of Rome from evil spirits.

This festival lasted from February 13 to February 15^th.

It wasn’ts until 1382 when we saw the first signal of romance occurring on Valentine’s Day.  It was from Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Parlement of Foules”, which said that, “For this was Saint Valentines Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.”

Ever since this point, romance has slowly creeped into St. Valentines Day.  Ever since, kids have been making paper Valentine’s for one another is a common theme.  For teenagers, it’s about giving flowers, candy and a poem into that special someone’s locker.  For adults; it features a romance-like dinner with a romance walk somewhere.

Romance hasn’t always been apart of Valentine’s Day, but ever since 1382, the idea of romance and Valentine’s Day has taken off.