Valentines Day

This is what we had to type in my technology class today, and I thought it was kind of interesting. I wish it had talked a bit about Victorian practices, which produced the "Valentine's Day Culture" we now have. Oh well.

Valentines Day is a special day observed on February 14. On this day people send greeting cards called valentines to their sweethearts, friends, and members of their families. Many valentines have romantic verses, and others have humorous pictures and sayings. Many say "Be my Valentine"

History

Beginnings: Different authorities believe Valentine's Day began in various ways. Some trace it to an ancient Roman festival called Lupercalia. Other experts connect the event with one or more saints of the early Christian church. Still others link it with an old English belief that birds choose their mates on February 14. Valentine's Day probably came from a combination of all three of those sources – plus the belief that spring is a time for lovers.

The ancient Romans held the festival of Lupercalia on February 15 to ensure protection from wolves. During this celebration, young men struck people with stripes of animal hide. Women took the blows because they thought that the whipping make them more fertile. After the Romans began their conquest of Britain in AD 43, the British borrowed many Roman festivals. Many writers link the festival of Lupercalia with Valentine's Day because of the similar date and the connection with fertility.

The early Christian church had at least two saints named Valentine. According to one story, the Roman Emperor Claudius II in AD 200's forbade young men to marry. The emperor thought single men made better soldiers. A priest named Valentine disobeyed the emperor's order and secretly married young couples.

Another story says Valentine was an early Christian who make friends with many children. The Romans imprisoned him because he refused to worship their gods. The children missed Valentine and tossed loving notes between the bars of his cell window., This tale may explain why people exchange messages on Valentine's Day. According to still another story, Valentine restored the sight of his jailer's blind daughter.

Many stories say that Valentine was executed on February 14, about AD 269. In AD 296, Saint Pope Gelasius I named February 14 as St. Valentine's Day.

In Norman France, a language spoken in Normandy during the Middle Ages, the word galatine sounds like Valentine and means gallant or lover. This resemblance may have caused people to think of Saint Valentine as the special saint of lovers.

The earliest records of Valentine's Day in English tell that birds chose their mates on that day. People used a different calendar before 1582, and February 14 came out on what is now February 24. Geoffrey Chaucer, an English poet of the 1300s, wrote in The Parliament of Fowls, "For this was on St Valentine's Day, / When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate." Shakespeare also mentioned this belief in A Midsummer Night's Dream. A character in the play discovers two lovers in the woods and asks, "St Valentine is past;/ Begin these woodbirds but to couple now?"


 

 
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Source:

Carol Bain, MA, Former Archivist, Folklore Archives, Indiana University, Bloomington.