Valentine’s Day has a long and rich history stemming from ancient times, beginning as a nudist festival, then transforming into a Christian memorial. Today, it has become the consumerist holiday we all know.
The holiday has been conglomerated across several cultures and time periods.
Back in the days of Ancient Rome, the Romans celebrated a festival called Lupercalia. The pagan festival took place Feb. 13-15 and celebrated love, sexuality and fertility. Part of the celebrations involved running naked around Rome and sacrificing a goat. The festivities became more chaste over time and, as Christianity took its dominant spot in Roman culture, it became assimilated into Christian tradition.
The legend of St. Valentine is commonly considered to have started the holiday. It is said that Valentine was executed by the Roman emperor Claudius II after officiating Christian marriages. Part of the legend explains that during Valentine’s imprisonment, he tutored a girl named Julia. Before Valentine’s execution, he sent a letter to Julia, signed, “From your Valentine.” This is where we get the idea of giving people valentines.
There were numerous other Valentine martyrs over the years. The Catholic Church recognized three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus. While Lupercalia survived the initial rise of Christendom, it was eventually outlawed by Pope Gelasius at the end of the 5th century. Gelasius replaced it with a holiday on Feb. 14 called St. Valentine’s Day to honor all the martyred Valentines. This is how we got the holiday’s date, but it was not associated with love until later.
As St. Valentine’s Day moved toward modernity, values of love and partnership were added into Valentine’s Day canon. People would exchange greetings for the holiday throughout the Middle Ages, starting to exchange homemade gifts and tokens of affection in the 18th century. By the 1840s, valentines started to be mass-produced.
Valentine’s Day is an example of how Christian syncretism has changed festivals of antiquity into the modern versions we know. Valentine’s Day has undergone drastic change throughout the two millennia it has existed.
From a nudist festival celebrated in the streets of Rome to a Christian celebration of executed martyrs, to an early modern celebration of love and partnership and the modern consumerist celebration of idealized love, these changes mirror the cultural shifts Western society has gone through.
Personally, I am excited to see how Valentine’s Day changes in the next couple decades as anti-consumerism is on the rise.
Recently, there have been a lot of pushbacks against the holiday because of how corporate it has become. I agree with this—no one should have to spend hundreds of dollars on cheap chocolate and flowers.
The day should go back to its roots as a celebration of love, not a celebration of how much money corporations can squeeze from couples. As these anti-consumerist attitudes grow in popular culture, I expect there to be a change in the way society celebrates this multi-faceted holiday.
Christopher Sprague can be reached at arg-opinion@uidaho.edu.