About Valentine’s Day

The holiday's roots are in the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, a fertility celebration commemorated annually on February 15. Pope Gelasius I recast this pagan festival as a Christian feast day circa 496,

declaring February 14 to be St. Valentine's Day.

Most scholars believe that the St. Valentine of the holiday was priest who attracted the disfavor of Roman emperor Claudius II around 270. According to the legend, Claudius II had prohibited marriage for young men. Claiming then bachelors made better soldiers. Valentine continued to secretly perform marriage ceremonies bat eventually apprehended by the Romans and put to death. Another legend says that Valentine, imprisoned by Claudius, fell in love with the daughter of his jailer. Before he was executed, he sent her a letter signed “from your Valentine". Probably the most plausible story surrounding St. Valentine is one not focused on passionate love but on Christian love: he was martyred for refusing to renounce his religion.

It was not until the 14th century that this Christian feast day became definitively associated with love. According to medieval scholar Henry Ansgar Kelly, Author of Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine, it was who first linked St. Valentine´s Day with romance.

In 1381, Chaucer composed a poem in honor of the engagement between England´s Richard II and Anne of Bohemia. As was the poetic tradition, Chaucer associated the occasion with a feast day. In “The Parliament of Fowls,”the royal engagement, the mating season of birds and St. Valentine´s Day are linked:

For this was on St. Valentine's Day,

When every fowl cometh there to choose

Nowadays, St Valentine's Day is celebrated with enthusiasm in several countries around the world. Most common Valentine’s Day tradition and custom is expressing one's love with an exchange of cards, flowers and gifts. Initially people used to exchange handwritten notes but starting with the 19th century, the practice of sending hand written notes was replaced by the exchange of mass-produced greeting cards. Valentine's Day cards came to be gifted to teachers, siblings, parents, friends and dear ones along with sweethearts.