The Legends and Truths about the Saint and the Celebration
Valentine’s Day may be the most misunderstood of holidays, with many creative, but ultimately fabricated stories about its origins, as well as the person for whom it is named. Let’s look at a few of the myths and then what history actually tells us about the celebration that now takes place on February 14th.
Myth #1–Valentine’s Day is the original “greeting card holiday,” a relatively modern creation of marketing minds to sell cards, flowers, chocolates and other things. Not true, say historians. Though the person for whom the holiday is named lived in the third century of the common era, most evidence suggests that the holiday, as we now know it, was first celebrated in Victorian England. In fact, many scholars attribute the rise of Valentine’s Day to improvements in the British postal system in the mid 1800s. Those advancements made it easy persons (in otherwise stuffy Victorian England) to anonymously send romantic or flirtatious notes or cards to others. Not surprisingly, businesses arose to take commercial advantage of the trend and the modern version of St. Valentine’s Day was born. Many scholars, however, trace the origins back to a Roman festival known as Lupercalia, which involved fertility rites. Though that festival was banned in the 5th century, it’s believed that it’s association with fertility led to its evolution into St. Valentine’s Day.
Myth #2—The man who became canonized as St. Valentine was known and documented as a “hopeless romantic. In fact, there were at least three individuals named Valentine from the third century who were elevated to sainthood, but there’s little information to help scholars understand which saint became the inspiration for what we currently know as Valentine’s Day. It is believed that the namesake for the holiday was a priest or bishop who assisted persecuted believers and was martyred for his actions.
Myth #3—Valentine’s Day is outdated and dying out. The numbers simply don’t support that. In 2018, in the United States alone, more than $20 billion was spent on cards, flowers and gifts. Interestingly, a study conducted at the same time found two of every three respondents agreeing that consumerism had ruined St. Valentine’s Day.
Though the creation of St. Valentine’s Day remains a matter of disagreement among scholars, the holiday remains vibrant and healthy, with billions of dollars spent on cards, flowers, chocolates and gifts every year.
