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Valentine’s Day
Valentine's Day or Saint Valentine's Day is a holiday celebrated on February 14 by many
people throughout the world. In the English-speaking countries, it is the traditional day on
which lovers express their love for each other by sending Valentine's cards, presenting
flowers, or offering confectionery. The holiday is named after two among the numerous Early
Christian martyrs named Valentine. The day became associated with romantic love in the
circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love
flourished.
The day is most closely associated with the mutual exchange of love notes in the form of
"valentines". Modern Valentine symbols include the heart-shaped outline, doves, and the
figure of the winged Cupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten notes have largely given
way to mass-produced greeting cards.
Older Tradition
The sending of Valentines was a fashion in nineteenth-century Great Britain, and, in 1847,
Esther Howland developed a successful business in her Worcester, Massachusetts home
with hand-made Valentine cards based on British models. The popularity of Valentine cards
in 19th century America, where many Valentine cards are now general greeting cards rather
than declarations of love, was a harbinger of the future commercialization of holidays in the
United States. It's considered one of the Hallmark holidays.
The U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that approximately one billion valentines are
sent each year worldwide, making the day the second largest card-sending holiday of the
year, behind Christmas. The association estimates that, in the US, men spend on average
twice as much money as women.
Saint Valentine
Numerous early Christian martyrs were named Valentine. The Valentines honored on
February 14 are Valentine of Rome (Valentinus presb. m. Romae) and Valentine of Terni
(Valentinus ep. Interamnensis m. Romae). Valentine of Rome was a priest in Rome who
suffered martyrdom about AD 269 and was buried on the Via Flaminia. His relics are at the
Church of Saint Praxed in Rome. and at Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin, Ireland.
Valentine of Terni became bishop of Interamna (modern Terni) about AD 197 and is said to
have been martyred during the persecution under Emperor Aurelian. He is also buried on the
Via Flaminia, but in a different location than Valentine of Rome. His relics are at the Basilica
of Saint Valentine in Terni (Basilica di San Valentino)
The Catholic Encyclopedia also speaks of a third saint named Valentine who was mentioned
in early martyrologies under date of February 14. He was martyred in Africa with a number of
companions, but nothing more is known about him.
No romantic elements are present in the original early medieval biographies of either of
these martyrs. By the time a Saint Valentine became linked to romance in the fourteenth
century, distinctions between Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni were utterly lost.
In the 1969 revision of the Roman Catholic Calendar of Saints, the feast day of Saint
Valentine on February 14 was removed from the General Roman Calendar and relegated to
particular (local or even national) calendars for the following reason: "Though the memorial
of Saint Valentine is ancient, it is left to particular calendars, since, apart from his name,
nothing is known of Saint Valentine except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on
February 14."The feast day is still celebrated in Balzan (Malta) where relics of the saint are
claimed to be found, and also throughout the world by Traditionalist Catholics who follow the
older, pre-Vatican II calendar.
The Early Medieval acta of either Saint Valentine were excerpted by Bede and briefly
expounded in Legenda Aurea. According to that version, St Valentine was persecuted as a
Christian and interrogated by Roman Emperor Claudius II in person. Claudius was
impressed by Valentine and had a discussion with him, attempting to get him to convert to
Roman paganism in order to save his life. Valentine refused and tried to convert Claudius to
Christianity instead. Because of this, he was executed. Before his execution, he is reported
to have performed a miracle by healing the blind daughter of his jailer.
Legenda Aurea still providing no connections whatsoever with sentimental love, appropriate
lore has been embroidered in modern times to portray Valentine as a priest who refused an
unattested law attributed to Roman Emperor Claudius II, allegedly ordering that young men
remain single. The Emperor supposedly did this to grow his army, believing that married men
did not make for good soldiers. The priest Valentine, however, secretly performed marriage
ceremonies for young men. When Claudius found out about this, he had Valentine arrested
and thrown in jail. In an embellishment to The Golden Legend provided by American
Greetings, Inc. to History.com and widely repeated, on the evening before Valentine was to
be executed, he wrote the first "valentine" himself, addressed to a young girl variously
identified as his beloved as the jailer's daughter whom he had befriended and healed, or
both. It was a note that read "From your Valentine."
Attested traditions
Lupercalia
Though popular modern sources link unspecified Greco-Roman February holidays alleged
to be devoted to fertility and love to St Valentine's Day, Professor Jack Oruch of the
University of Kansas argued that prior to Chaucer, no links between the Saints named
Valentinus and romantic love existed. In the ancient Athenian calendar the period between
mid-January and mid-February was the month of Gamelion, dedicated to the sacred
marriage of Zeus and Hera.
In Ancient Rome, Lupercalia, observed February 13 through 15, was an archaic rite
connected to fertility. Lupercalia was a festival local to the city of Rome. The more general
Festival of Juno Februa, meaning "Juno the purifier "or "the chaste Juno," was celebrated on
February 13-14. Pope Gelasius I (492-496) abolished Lupercalia.
It is a common opinion that the Christian church may have decided to celebrate Valentine's
feast day in the middle of February in an effort to Christianize celebrations of the pagan
Lupercalia, and that a commemorative feast was established in 496 by Pope Gelasius I, of
those "... whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to
God," among whom was Valentine, was set for the useful day. Alternatively, William M.
Green argues that the Catholic Church could not abolish the deeply rooted Lupercalia
festival, so the church set aside a day to honor the Virgin Mary.
Chaucer's love birds
While some claim the first recorded association of Valentine's Day with romantic love is in
Parlement of Foules (1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer this may be the result of misinterpretation.
Chaucer wrote:
England to Anne of Bohemia. A treaty providing for a marriage was signed on May 2, 1381.
(When they were married eight months later, he was 13 or 14, and she was 14.)
Readers have uncritically assumed that Chaucer was referring to February 14 as Valentine's
Day; however, mid-February is an unlikely time for birds to be mating in England. Henry
Ansgar Kelly has pointed out that in the liturgical calendar; May 2 is the saints' day for
Valentine of Genoa. This St. Valentine was an early bishop of Genoa who died around AD
307.
Chaucer's Parliament of Foules is set in a fictional context of an old tradition, but in fact there
was no such tradition before Chaucer. The speculative explanation of sentimental customs,
posing as historical fact, had their origins among eighteenth-century antiquaries, notably
Alban Butler, the author of Butler's Lives of Saints, and have been perpetuated even by
respectable modern scholars. Most notably, "the idea that Valentine's Day customs
perpetuated those of the Roman Lupercalia has been accepted uncritically and repeated, in
various forms, up to the present"
Medieval period and the English Renaissance
Using the language of the law courts for the rituals of courtly love, a "High Court of Love"
was established in Paris on Valentine's Day in 1400. The court dealt with love contracts,
betrayals, and violence against women. Judges were selected by women on the basis of a
poetry reading. The earliest surviving valentine is a fifteenth-century rondeau written by
Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife, which commences.
Je suis desja d'amour tanné
Ma tres doulce Valentinée…
—Charles d’Orléans, Rondeau VI, lines 1–2
At the time, the duke was being held in the Tower of London following his capture at the
Battle of Agincourt, 1415.
Valentine's Day is mentioned ruefully by Ophelia in Hamlet (1600-1601):
Modern times
In 1797, a British publisher issued The Young Man’s Valentine Writer, which contained
scores of suggested sentimental verses for the young lover unable to compose his own.
Printers had already begun producing a limited number of cards with verses and sketches,
called “mechanical valentines,” and a reduction in postal rates in the next century ushered in
the less personal but easier practice of mailing valentines. That, in turn, made it possible for
the first time to exchange cards anonymously, which is taken as the reason for the sudden
appearance of racy verse in an era otherwise prudishly Victorian.
Paper Valentines being so popular in England in early 1800s, Valentines began to be
assembled in factories. Fancy Valentines were made with real lace and ribbons, with paper
lace introduced in mid 1800's... The reinvention of Saint Valentine's Day in the 1840s has
been traced by Leigh Eric Schmidt. As a writer in Graham's American Monthly observed in
1849, "Saint Valentine's Day... is becoming, nay it has become, a national holyday." In the
United States, the first mass-produced valentines of embossed paper lace were produced
and sold shortly after 1847 by Esther Howland (1828-1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts.
Her father operated a large book and stationery store, but Howland took her inspiration from
an English valentine she had received, so clearly the practice of sending Valentine's cards
had existed in England before it became popular in North America. The English practice of
sending Valentine's cards appears in Elizabeth Gaskell's Mr. Harrison's Confessions
(published 1851). Since 2001, the Greeting Card Association has been giving an annual
"Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary." The U.S. Greeting Card Association
estimates that approximately one billion valentines are sent each year worldwide, making the
day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year behind Christmas. The association
estimates that, in the US, men spend in average twice as much money as women.
Since the 19th century, handwritten notes have largely given way to mass-produced
greeting cards. The mid-nineteenth century Valentine's Day trade was a harbinger of further
commercialized holidays in the United States to follow.
In the second half of the twentieth century, the practice of exchanging cards was extended to
all manner of gifts in the United States, usually from a man to a woman. Such gifts typically
include roses and chocolates packed in a red satin, heart-shaped box. In the 1980s, the
diamond industry began to promote Valentine's Day as an occasion for giving jewelry. The
day has come to be associated with a generic platonic greeting of "Happy Valentine's Day."
As a joke, Valentine's Day is also referred to as "Singles Awareness Day." In some North
American elementary schools, children decorate classrooms, exchange cards, and eat
sweets. The greeting cards of these students often mention what they appreciate about
each other.
The rise of Internet popularity at the turn of the millennium is creating new traditions. Millions
of people use, every year, digital means of creating and sending Valentine's Day greeting
messages such as e-cards, love coupons or printable greeting cards.
Valentine's Day or Saint Valentine's Day is a holiday celebrated on February 14 by many
people throughout the world. In the English-speaking countries, it is the traditional day on
which lovers express their love for each other by sending Valentine's cards, presenting
flowers, or offering confectionery. The holiday is named after two among the numerous Early
Christian martyrs named Valentine. The day became associated with romantic love in the
circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love
flourished.
The day is most closely associated with the mutual exchange of love notes in the form of
"valentines". Modern Valentine symbols include the heart-shaped outline, doves, and the
figure of the winged Cupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten notes have largely given
way to mass-produced greeting cards.
Older Tradition
The sending of Valentines was a fashion in nineteenth-century Great Britain, and, in 1847,
Esther Howland developed a successful business in her Worcester, Massachusetts home
with hand-made Valentine cards based on British models. The popularity of Valentine cards
in 19th century America, where many Valentine cards are now general greeting cards rather
than declarations of love, was a harbinger of the future commercialization of holidays in the
United States. It's considered one of the Hallmark holidays.
The U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that approximately one billion valentines are
sent each year worldwide, making the day the second largest card-sending holiday of the
year, behind Christmas. The association estimates that, in the US, men spend on average
twice as much money as women.
Saint Valentine
Numerous early Christian martyrs were named Valentine. The Valentines honored on
February 14 are Valentine of Rome (Valentinus presb. m. Romae) and Valentine of Terni
(Valentinus ep. Interamnensis m. Romae). Valentine of Rome was a priest in Rome who
suffered martyrdom about AD 269 and was buried on the Via Flaminia. His relics are at the
Church of Saint Praxed in Rome. and at Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin, Ireland.
Valentine of Terni became bishop of Interamna (modern Terni) about AD 197 and is said to
have been martyred during the persecution under Emperor Aurelian. He is also buried on the
Via Flaminia, but in a different location than Valentine of Rome. His relics are at the Basilica
of Saint Valentine in Terni (Basilica di San Valentino)
The Catholic Encyclopedia also speaks of a third saint named Valentine who was mentioned
in early martyrologies under date of February 14. He was martyred in Africa with a number of
companions, but nothing more is known about him.
No romantic elements are present in the original early medieval biographies of either of
these martyrs. By the time a Saint Valentine became linked to romance in the fourteenth
century, distinctions between Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni were utterly lost.
In the 1969 revision of the Roman Catholic Calendar of Saints, the feast day of Saint
Valentine on February 14 was removed from the General Roman Calendar and relegated to
particular (local or even national) calendars for the following reason: "Though the memorial
of Saint Valentine is ancient, it is left to particular calendars, since, apart from his name,
nothing is known of Saint Valentine except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on
February 14."The feast day is still celebrated in Balzan (Malta) where relics of the saint are
claimed to be found, and also throughout the world by Traditionalist Catholics who follow the
older, pre-Vatican II calendar.
The Early Medieval acta of either Saint Valentine were excerpted by Bede and briefly
expounded in Legenda Aurea. According to that version, St Valentine was persecuted as a
Christian and interrogated by Roman Emperor Claudius II in person. Claudius was
impressed by Valentine and had a discussion with him, attempting to get him to convert to
Roman paganism in order to save his life. Valentine refused and tried to convert Claudius to
Christianity instead. Because of this, he was executed. Before his execution, he is reported
to have performed a miracle by healing the blind daughter of his jailer.
Legenda Aurea still providing no connections whatsoever with sentimental love, appropriate
lore has been embroidered in modern times to portray Valentine as a priest who refused an
unattested law attributed to Roman Emperor Claudius II, allegedly ordering that young men
remain single. The Emperor supposedly did this to grow his army, believing that married men
did not make for good soldiers. The priest Valentine, however, secretly performed marriage
ceremonies for young men. When Claudius found out about this, he had Valentine arrested
and thrown in jail. In an embellishment to The Golden Legend provided by American
Greetings, Inc. to History.com and widely repeated, on the evening before Valentine was to
be executed, he wrote the first "valentine" himself, addressed to a young girl variously
identified as his beloved as the jailer's daughter whom he had befriended and healed, or
both. It was a note that read "From your Valentine."
Attested traditions
Lupercalia
Though popular modern sources link unspecified Greco-Roman February holidays alleged
to be devoted to fertility and love to St Valentine's Day, Professor Jack Oruch of the
University of Kansas argued that prior to Chaucer, no links between the Saints named
Valentinus and romantic love existed. In the ancient Athenian calendar the period between
mid-January and mid-February was the month of Gamelion, dedicated to the sacred
marriage of Zeus and Hera.
In Ancient Rome, Lupercalia, observed February 13 through 15, was an archaic rite
connected to fertility. Lupercalia was a festival local to the city of Rome. The more general
Festival of Juno Februa, meaning "Juno the purifier "or "the chaste Juno," was celebrated on
February 13-14. Pope Gelasius I (492-496) abolished Lupercalia.
It is a common opinion that the Christian church may have decided to celebrate Valentine's
feast day in the middle of February in an effort to Christianize celebrations of the pagan
Lupercalia, and that a commemorative feast was established in 496 by Pope Gelasius I, of
those "... whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to
God," among whom was Valentine, was set for the useful day. Alternatively, William M.
Green argues that the Catholic Church could not abolish the deeply rooted Lupercalia
festival, so the church set aside a day to honor the Virgin Mary.
Chaucer's love birds
While some claim the first recorded association of Valentine's Day with romantic love is in
Parlement of Foules (1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer this may be the result of misinterpretation.
Chaucer wrote:
- For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.
England to Anne of Bohemia. A treaty providing for a marriage was signed on May 2, 1381.
(When they were married eight months later, he was 13 or 14, and she was 14.)
Readers have uncritically assumed that Chaucer was referring to February 14 as Valentine's
Day; however, mid-February is an unlikely time for birds to be mating in England. Henry
Ansgar Kelly has pointed out that in the liturgical calendar; May 2 is the saints' day for
Valentine of Genoa. This St. Valentine was an early bishop of Genoa who died around AD
307.
Chaucer's Parliament of Foules is set in a fictional context of an old tradition, but in fact there
was no such tradition before Chaucer. The speculative explanation of sentimental customs,
posing as historical fact, had their origins among eighteenth-century antiquaries, notably
Alban Butler, the author of Butler's Lives of Saints, and have been perpetuated even by
respectable modern scholars. Most notably, "the idea that Valentine's Day customs
perpetuated those of the Roman Lupercalia has been accepted uncritically and repeated, in
various forms, up to the present"
Medieval period and the English Renaissance
Using the language of the law courts for the rituals of courtly love, a "High Court of Love"
was established in Paris on Valentine's Day in 1400. The court dealt with love contracts,
betrayals, and violence against women. Judges were selected by women on the basis of a
poetry reading. The earliest surviving valentine is a fifteenth-century rondeau written by
Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife, which commences.
Je suis desja d'amour tanné
Ma tres doulce Valentinée…
—Charles d’Orléans, Rondeau VI, lines 1–2
At the time, the duke was being held in the Tower of London following his capture at the
Battle of Agincourt, 1415.
Valentine's Day is mentioned ruefully by Ophelia in Hamlet (1600-1601):
- To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
And dupp'd the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.
- —William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5
Modern times
In 1797, a British publisher issued The Young Man’s Valentine Writer, which contained
scores of suggested sentimental verses for the young lover unable to compose his own.
Printers had already begun producing a limited number of cards with verses and sketches,
called “mechanical valentines,” and a reduction in postal rates in the next century ushered in
the less personal but easier practice of mailing valentines. That, in turn, made it possible for
the first time to exchange cards anonymously, which is taken as the reason for the sudden
appearance of racy verse in an era otherwise prudishly Victorian.
Paper Valentines being so popular in England in early 1800s, Valentines began to be
assembled in factories. Fancy Valentines were made with real lace and ribbons, with paper
lace introduced in mid 1800's... The reinvention of Saint Valentine's Day in the 1840s has
been traced by Leigh Eric Schmidt. As a writer in Graham's American Monthly observed in
1849, "Saint Valentine's Day... is becoming, nay it has become, a national holyday." In the
United States, the first mass-produced valentines of embossed paper lace were produced
and sold shortly after 1847 by Esther Howland (1828-1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts.
Her father operated a large book and stationery store, but Howland took her inspiration from
an English valentine she had received, so clearly the practice of sending Valentine's cards
had existed in England before it became popular in North America. The English practice of
sending Valentine's cards appears in Elizabeth Gaskell's Mr. Harrison's Confessions
(published 1851). Since 2001, the Greeting Card Association has been giving an annual
"Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary." The U.S. Greeting Card Association
estimates that approximately one billion valentines are sent each year worldwide, making the
day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year behind Christmas. The association
estimates that, in the US, men spend in average twice as much money as women.
Since the 19th century, handwritten notes have largely given way to mass-produced
greeting cards. The mid-nineteenth century Valentine's Day trade was a harbinger of further
commercialized holidays in the United States to follow.
In the second half of the twentieth century, the practice of exchanging cards was extended to
all manner of gifts in the United States, usually from a man to a woman. Such gifts typically
include roses and chocolates packed in a red satin, heart-shaped box. In the 1980s, the
diamond industry began to promote Valentine's Day as an occasion for giving jewelry. The
day has come to be associated with a generic platonic greeting of "Happy Valentine's Day."
As a joke, Valentine's Day is also referred to as "Singles Awareness Day." In some North
American elementary schools, children decorate classrooms, exchange cards, and eat
sweets. The greeting cards of these students often mention what they appreciate about
each other.
The rise of Internet popularity at the turn of the millennium is creating new traditions. Millions
of people use, every year, digital means of creating and sending Valentine's Day greeting
messages such as e-cards, love coupons or printable greeting cards.
1Peter 4: 7-8
7)The end of all things is near. Therefore
be clear minded and self-controlled so
that you can pray. 8) Above all, love
each other deeply, because love covers
a multitude of sins.
7)The end of all things is near. Therefore
be clear minded and self-controlled so
that you can pray. 8) Above all, love
each other deeply, because love covers
a multitude of sins.