About 145 million Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year. But mid-February wasn’t always the time for flowers and chocolate. The history of Valentine’s Day isn’t all about love!
Love is blind (but a good shot)
We think of Cupid as a cute baby with a bow and arrow, but he started out as a god named Eros. In Ancient Greek myths, Eros shoots people with both arrows of love and arrows of dislike! He became less handsome and more babyish in the Hellenistic period (323 BC to 30 BC), when poets described him as a mischievous child. When the Romand conquered the Greeks and adopted their mythology, they renamed Eros to Cupid. Over one thousand years later, Victorians represented Cupid as a cute cherub on Valentine’s Day cards!
Bloody hides = babies?
The original Valentine’s Day was the pagan celebration of Lupercalia on February 15. This ancient festival involved sacrificing goats and dogs and slapping women with the animals’ bloody hides in attempt to increase their fertility! Later in the day, unmarried women placed their names in an urn and each bachelor drew out a name. These couples were stuck with dating each other until marriage (or the next Lupercalia)!
Which Valentine?
The Catholic Church recognizes multiple saints named Valentine! According to one legend, Valentine was a priest in Rome around 200 AD. When the emperor outlawed marriage for young couples, Valentine supposedly defied the order by marrying couples in secret. A second Saint Valentine was allegedly thrown in jail for helping Christians escape Roman prisons. People say he even wrote a love letter to the jailer’s daughter signed “From your Valentine”!
Roses are red; this jailhouse gives me the blues
Valentine’s Day was established by the Pope around 500 AD, but the earliest surviving valentines were written in the 1400s. The oldest one is from 1415, when Charles, Duke of Orleans wrote a poem to his wife while he was in prison! By the mid-1700s, it was common for people to exchange handwritten notes or small gifts on Valentine’s Day.
Add a squeeze of lemon
In the Victorian era, printed cards began to be mass-produced and postage became more affordable. Many of these cards helped people express their undying love, but other cards had a mean streak. “Vinegar valentines” took jabs at everyone from annoying bosses to unwanted suitors. They were mailed anonymously by cash on delivery, so they cost the recipient one penny to read!
Valentine’s Day wasn’t always a lovely holiday, but it’s mostly fun today. How do you like to celebrate Valentine’s Day? Click the blue button below to vote! 👓