Valentine’s Day: Who Was The Real St. Valentine?
Valentine’s Day is celebrated around the world on February 14. People consider it to be the day of love. It is a special day of the year where couples exchange gifts as a sign of their love.
Special events take place all over the world on this day. In several countries, there are parties where single people try to find a partner. In other countries, people celebrate love. In the Philippines , for example, they have held a “longest kiss” competition for several years.
Almost the entire western world celebrates Valentine’s Day. However, not many people know who the saint was, nor why we are now celebrating Valentine’s Day in his honor.
The truth is that no one knows for sure. Three possible martyrs gave rise to this celebration. However, everything seems to indicate that the celebration originated in a weekend from Roman times.
The origins of the celebration of Valentine’s Day
It seems that the origin of the Valentine’s Day festival was a three-day Roman festival, known as Lupercalia. It was a celebration in honor of the fertility gods, held in mid-February to celebrate the official start of spring.
During the festival, there was an activity where young men randomly chose a girl’s name. The girl they chose was their girlfriend during the festivities, and quite often these relationships ended in marriage. With the gradual rise of the Catholic Church, one of the goals was to eradicate these pagan festivals. D a was not easy, however, considering that they were deeply rooted in tradition.
Thus, Pope Gelasius I in 494 AD. themselves to link the festival to the name of a saint, Saint Valentine. He adopted February 14 as the official date of the tribute. However, he did not record exactly which Valentine he was referring to, of which there were three at the time. One was a Roman convert, the other was a bishop and the third a martyr from North Africa.
The most likely Valentine’s Day
Most likely, Pope Gelasius wanted to pay homage to a martyr from the second century of our time. There are two stories that we can associate with this saint. One story is that he was a Roman physician who converted to Christianity and became a priest.
His story took place in 270 AD, around the time when Emperor Claudius II forbade young people to marry. He reckoned that if they married and had children, they would not be good soldiers. Valentine, the converted priest, believed that this measure was unfair. Therefore, he decided to celebrate the youth’s marriage in secret and defy the emperor’s order.
Claudius II learned of the priest’s “transgressions” thanks to rumors that reached him. The emperor therefore sent for him and the saint took the opportunity to talk to him about his faith. Apparently he listened carefully to the saint, but the governor of Rome planned against him, and in the end the emperor ordered that he be beheaded.
Another version of the story
Another version of this story tells of a doctor who became a priest who also celebrated weddings in secret. The difference in this story, however, is that Valentine, when he was discovered by the emperor, was put in a miserable cell. While there, he met the daughter of the prisoner who took care of him and followed him through the difficult times.
Eventually Valentine fell in love with the girl, but just then the emperor’s order to have him beheaded came. He barely had time to write a note to her, but he managed to find time to declare his love for her and signed the note “Your Valentine”. This is said to be the origin of the first ways to celebrate this festival, which were basically people who wrote love letters to each other and not much else.
However, it was not until the 19th century that Valentine’s Day acquired many of its current characteristics and traditions. Esther Howland, the daughter of a bookseller who was impressed with an English Valentine’s card, had a lot to do with it. She made several of them and asked her brother to include them in the catalog when he was selling around the United States. The idea was a resounding success.
In addition, the now famous Hallmark Cards , from Kansas City in the USA, decided in 1913 to carry out a mass printing of cards with love messages, which they called “valentine cards”. Ever since then, the festival has had the characteristics we most associate with it today.
