On February 14, Valentine’s Day, a national holiday commemorating love, is celebrated. This holiday may seem simple at first, but it actually has a long and deep history.
Valentine’s Day first began when the Romans celebrated the festival of Lupercalia in the middle of February. In the beginning of the festival, Roman Priests known as the members of the Luperci, would gather at the cave where the founders of Rome, infants Romulus and Remus, are said to be taken care of by a she-wolf.
The members would then proceed to sacrifice a goat for fertility and a dog for purity. After the sacrifice, they stripped the goat’s hide and dipped it into the blood. This was done for the members to get ready to go into the city streets. In the city streets, they proceeded to slap woman and crop fields for fertility. They slapped the ground of the field with the hide. When women would get slapped with the goat’s hide, they were considered lucky.
Lupercalia was later changed by Christians during the Middle Ages. The Christians made it become a feast for Saint Valentine, christianizing the celebration. They did this because Lupercalia was a pagan holiday and did not fit with their beliefs.
In the 1400s, written Valentines started to appear. Charles, The Duke of Orleans,wrote the first ever Valentine’s Day letter in 1415. This was written to his wife during the time he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. During the 1800s, lovers started to trade trinkets of affection and handwritten notes between each other. By the 1900s, the printed cards normally seen today started to replace the trinkets and notes.
According to Hallmark, a lead seller in cards, there are about 145 million Valentine’s Day cards sent each year. Valentine’s Day yields the second largest number of cards sent; only Christmas beats it. Overall, Valentine’s Day has always been about love and fertility, and has survived through the centuries to become what it is today.
