The violent history of Valentine’s Day

BY BROOKLYN MCKINNEY

Multimedia Journalist

St. Valentine’s Day was founded to honor the life of a Roman priest named Valentine, who defied direct orders from Roman emperor Claudius II and paid with his life.

Valentine kept marrying off men that Claudius II wanted to recruit into the army. Unfortunately for him, the Roman emperor didn’t believe that married men would make good soldiers, so he had him arrested.

During his imprisonment, it is said that Valentine became close with his jailer’s blind daughter. Before his execution in A.D. 269, he healed her blindness and wrote her a note, signing it “from your Valentine.”

In A.D. 500, Pope Gelasius founded St. Valentine’s Day, and many scholars believe that it actually took the place of Lupercalia, a pagan fertility festival that he banned in A.D. 494.

Lupercalia was celebrated annually on Feb. 15 under the supervision of priests called “Luperci.”

As a fertility festival, it was held in honor of Roman fertility gods, like Faunus who looked like a half-human half-goat creature, and Lupercus, a protector of shepherds and their flocks.

The Romans would gather in this special cave where it was said that Romus and Romulus, the founders of Rome, were nursed by a she-wolf named “Lupus.”

They would watch the Luperci sacrifice goats and a dog. They did all of this completely naked, slitting the animal’s throats open with a sacrificial knife and then smearing the blood all over themselves.

While the blood would be wiped off with wool soaked in milk, the men would laugh.

After a sacrificial feast, the Luperci would then cut “thongs” or whips from goat skin and run around Palatine Hill, using them to strike any woman who came near them. Being hit with the goat whips was said to give them luck and fertility.

So how did St. Valentine’s Day go from animal sacrifice and Christian martyrdom to the holiday of love?

Well, one of the first references of Valentine’s Day as a sacred day for lovers actually came from Geoffrey Chaucer, who is mostly known for his book of short stories called “The Canterbury Tales.”

But he also wrote this poem in 1382 called the “Parliament of Foules” about a flock of birds engaged in a debate while three male eagles try to seduce an aristocratic lady eagle.

The debate is full of insults, and the lady eagle ends up choosing no one. Just like there are no good fish in the sea, there were no good birds in the sky.

One of the eagles also has a high status, like his potential mate, but is more in love with the idea of love than her.

Eagle number two has a lower status than the lady eagle and is really bitter about it, while eagle number three is a clout chaser and only wants her to be his because every other bird does.

Chaucer wrote, “For this was on Seynt Valentynes day, When every foul cometh there to choose his mate.”

This makes sense because, back then, English birds would pair off in February for mating season, and St. Valentine’s Day is on Feb. 14.

So in the middle ages, the holiday started being associated with romance, and by the 18th century, it became a common practice for people to draw names for their “Valentine” the night before.

Drawing someone’s name was seen as a good omen to become man and wife, so many women started performing these witchy rituals in churchyards or sleeping with bay leaves under their pillow to induce dreams of their betrothed.

Along with sending love letters or poems to express their affection, people also started normalizing hate mail with “Vinegar Valentine’s” in the Victorian era.

These snarky poems were meant to leave a sour taste in the recipient’s mouth and would often be packaged with an ugly caricature drawing of them.

Valentine’s Day of course also became an excuse to send gifts such as flowers and chocolate.

Red roses became the traditional Valentine’s Day flower because a Swedish King visited Persia one day and discovered that in Persian culture, red roses symbolize love.

While the discovery of chocolate goes way back to the Aztecs and their cacao beans, it soon became a delicacy that was mainly available to the wealthy in Spain and Europe.

One of these wealthy people was Giacomo Casanova, and he was renowned as the most famous lover of all time from publishing stories about his very scandalous life in the 1700s.

This guy did it all. He was a lawyer and a gambler who somehow found time to sleep with everyone and their mother.

In his autobiography called “Story of My Life,” he wrote all about his sex life and an “elixir” of love that made him good in bed.

Spoiler alert: It was chocolate, so that’s why rich Europeans started drinking hot chocolate.

The reason that stores currently sell chocolate in a heart-shaped box is because Robert Cadbury invented his heart-shaped box of chocolates in 1868. This version was far more affordable to the masses, and the packaging was, of course, a huge hit because chocolate companies are still using it today.

Currently, Valentine’s Day is mostly an over-commercialized excuse to buy each other roses and those heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. Oh, and don’t forget to make expensive dinner reservations at least a month in advance just to sit in an overcrowded restaurant when the relationship barely lasted through traffic.

Should people just treat their partners like they love them every day and maybe bring back the hate mail?

Hopefully, this article inspired someone to draw an ugly picture of their mortal enemy and mail it to them. At least no one is sacrificing goats or dogs.