Valentine’s Day Special: Some Myths, Some Stories You Never Knew

Valentine’s day is a day of liaison and romance between lovers, a day dedicated to love, Love in any form and every form.

“C’est cela l’amour, tout donner, tout sacrifier sans espoir de retour” means ‘That is love, to give away everything, to sacrifice everything, without waiting for anything in return,’ by Albert Camus. 

 Love is a kind of emotion that doesn’t need any noteworthy day to celebrate its importance. The day has its cultural and religious significance. The number of days before Valentine’s Day is known as Valentine’s week. And the entire week is meant to celebrate the feeling of love for your dear ones. The days are Rose Day, Propose Day, Chocolate Day, Teddy Day, Promise Day, Hug Day, Kiss Day and Valentine’s Day.

Now, when it comes to Valentine’s Day there are myths and truths behind myths. Many stories, many rumours and many pieces have been lightened up in the history of Valentine’s Day. 

According to The New York Times, the holiday may be based on a medley of two men. There were, after all, two Valentines executed on February 14 in different years by Roman Emperor Claudius II in the 3rd century A.C.E. It’s believed that the Catholic Church may have established St. Valentine’s Day to honour these men, who they believed to be martyrs.

Valentine’s Day- Myths, Truths and Many More…

There is also a possibility that one of these men, Saint Valentine of Terni, had been secretly officiating weddings for Roman soldiers against the emperor’s wishes, making him, in some eyes, a proponent of love.

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Another story interests the practice of writing love letters to your valentine. It’s said that St. Valentine wrote the first “valentine” greeting to a young girl he tutored and fell in love with while he was imprisoned for the crimes outlined above. According to ‘The History Channel’, before his death, he wrote her a letter signed “From your Valentine,” which remains a commonly used phrase to this day.

If we go further with the stories there was a mid-February fertility festival in ancient Rome called Lupercalia. The festival is dedicated to the Roman god of agriculture, Faunas, and Roman founders Romulus and Remus. This feast of sensuality involved a ritual where an order of Roman priests ran naked through the streets, “gently slapping” women with the blood-soaked hides of sacrificed animals, which they believed promoted fertility. Later, the women would be paired off with men “by lottery.”

In the late 5th century A.C.E., Pope Gelasius I outlawed Lupercalia. Some sources contend that he designated the celebration of St. Valentine’s Day on February 14 to replace the pagan holiday.

Valentine’s Day is a Public day to celebrate Love

The late scholar Jack B. Oruch, a University of Kansas English professor, determined that Chaucer was the first to link love with St. Valentine in his 14th-century works “The Parliament of Fowls” and “The Complaint of Mars,” notes the Times. Therefore, Oruch claimed, Chaucer invented Valentine’s Day as we know it today.

At the time of Chaucer’s writing, February 14 also happened to be considered the first day of spring in Britain, because it was the beginning of birds’ mating season—perfectly appropriate for a celebration of affection.

Now the Question arises why Chaucer didn’t write “For this was on February 14”? Jacqueline Simpson from The Folklore Society explains it this way: “In the Catholic Church every day in the year celebrates at least one saint, and for a public who had no printed calendars it was easier to remember dates by names than by figures.”

Whether or not Chaucer can be fully credited, he and fellow writer Shakespeare indeed popularised the amorous relationships surrounding the day. Soon after people began writing and exchanging love letters to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

 

 

The Mid-19th Victorian Era

The mid-19th century marked the beginning of many of the commercialised Valentine’s Day traditions that shaped today’s V-Day. Victorian men wooed women with flowers, Richard Cadbury created the first heart-shaped box of chocolates, and the New England Confectionery Company began stamping out an early version of Conversation Hearts. Around this time, the “Mother of the American Valentine” Esther Howland, only in her early 20s, popularised store-bought English-style valentines in America thanks to her innovative assembly line process that made the elaborate cards affordable. 

By the early 1910s, an American company that would one day become Hallmark began distributing its more official “Valentine’s Day cards.” The rest, of course, is history.

The significance of this day has become a theme of pop culture in recent years.