St Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day is thought to be a relic of the ancient festival of Lupercalia, the spring festival, which the Romans celebrated on 15 February. The rituals focused on the Lupercal – the cave where, according to legend, the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus. Naked, apart from skins of recently sacrificed goats, young men would run around the Palatine Hill, where the Lupercal was located, and strike the women with strips of goatskin to promote their fertility.
Like so many familiar festivals, as Christianity gained ground, it co-opted not only people, but also their traditions. The Lupercal became St Valentine's Day, named after an early Christian martyr, killed by the Romans for refusing to renounce his faith. Well, that's one version of the story, at any rate. In another version he was executed for secretly performing marriage ceremonies when the Roman Emperor Claudius II had forbidden young men to marry, on the grounds that bachelors make better soldiers. A third version has him being imprisoned by Claudius, falling in love with his jailer's daughter and signing his last letter to her 'Your Valentine'. Or perhaps there were three different Valentines.
Whatever the truth of the story, St Valentine was a very popular saint for medieval Christians, and Chaucer documented the significance of 14 February in a poem he wrote in honour of the engagement of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia, which included the lines:
For this was on St Valentine's Day,
When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate.
That was in 1381, and throughout the following centuries, people sent their lovers notes, poems, messages and pictures on St Valentine's Day. The rise of manufacturing in the 19th century brought mass-produced cards, some of them elaborately decorated with lace and ribbons
In 1969, when the Catholic church purged its calendar of saints of uncertain history, poor Valentine had to go. That did not diminish the immense popularity of Valentine's Day, which has continued to grow. Today, though, the celebrations probably have more in common with its Roman origins than with any kind of saint.
