The True History of Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day brings on a mixture of emotions for Americans. Generally speaking, it is a day focused on love and romance. Singletons feel the pressure and couples pour out their heart to one another.

But people are not just opening their hearts on Valentine’s Day. They are opening their wallets. According to this info-graph from Forbes.com, we’re looking at spending a whopping $19,700,000,000 on Valentines Day in 2016 (1). That’s like 656667 cars…

People are aware that major holidays are highly marketed. But Christians may need to watch more than just their wallet on February 14th. 

Lupercalia: The Original Valentine’s Day

The origin of Valentine’s Day dates back 2,000 years. Ancient Romans celebrated the god Lupercus from February 13-15 in a pagan festival called Lupercalia. Lupercus is identified with Lycean Pan and is derived from lupus, wolf (2). Luperci priests celebrated the festival in the Lupercal; the cave in which Romulus and Remus were supposedly nurtured by their mother, a vestal she-wolf virgin who was raped by the god Mars. Creepy.

Noel Lenski (Classics Professor at Yale) describes the festival, saying that young men would strip naked (except for the girdles) and would go out to spank the young women’s backsides with goat or dog-skin whips, believing this would improve their fertility. Sometimes the men would pick a name from a lottery of women’s names; keeping the chosen woman as a sexual companion for the year. (6,7). As the Roman civilization became more dominant, soldiers brought the custom to every country they conquered.

The Pope’s Valentine

In 313 A.D., Roman Emperor Constantine accepted Christianity and made it the official religion of the empire. Despite this, Lupercalia was still celebrated in later empires, such as that of Emperor Anthemius (467-472) (8.). In an effort to Christianize the festival, Pope Gelasius I changed Lupercalia to Saint Valentine’s Day in 496 A.D., declaring Saint Valentine as the patron saint of lovers. 

The original lottery of winning a sexual partner for the year shifted to picking a saint to emulate for the year. The change seemed to work; the custom continued for hundreds of years (9, 10).

However, in 1969, Pope Paul VI removed Saint Valentine’s Day from the Roman Catholic Calendar of Saints, stating “Though the memorial of Saint Valentine is ancient, it is left to particular calendars, since, apart from his name, nothing is known of Saint Valentine except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on February 14th” (14).

In other words, to Christianize a pagan holiday, a Catholic priest picked a random saint who happened to be buried during Lupercalia. Judging by the billions spent on the holiday this year alone, the removal from the RC calendar doesn’t seem to have had much effect.

What about the Chocolate?

Even the chocolate associated with Valentine’s Day has a twisted origin. The fifteenth-century Aztec emperor Moctezuma I (1398-1469) believed that eating “chocolate on a regular basis made him more virile and better able to serve his harem” (12, 14). The red rose has become the symbol of love (14). But not randomly. It was a favorite of the goddess Venus who later birthed cupid (15).

Although the “day of love” was once declared holy by a pope in the Catholic Church, it has absolutely nothing to do with the Christian God. Rather, Valentine’s Day is evidently rooted in the pagan festivities of Rome. 

No Valentine for Me, I’m a Christian.

No more valentine’s day for me. After doing a little research, you can easily see that all the practices contained in Valentine’s day are of pagan origin. The Bible gives a clear warning about these type of practices.

Mark 7:7-9 — They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.” And he said to them: “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!

Matthew 15:7-9 — You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.

If you’re Christian, it might be time to reconsider your plan for February 14th. True love is not expressed with a card or a box of chocolates. 

John 14:15 — “If you love me, you will obey what I command.”

[References]
1. Inquisitir, Two Valentine’s Day 2015 Buyer Facts That May Make You Rethink Your Gifts
2. Etymonline, Lupercalia
3. The Ides: Caesar’s Murder and the War for Rome, Stephen Dando-Collins, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010
4. Ancient History About.com, The God of the Lupercalia, N.S. Gill
5. Wise geek, What is a Girdle?
6. The Oxford Classical Dictionary edited by Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth, Esther Eidinow, pg. 892
7. The Telegraph, History of Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2010
8. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbons, Chapter 36
9. American Catholic, The Origins of St. Valentine’s Day
10. Valentine Day Gift Ideas, Cassandrea Visik, Clinton Gilkie
11. Calendarium Romanum ex Decreto Sacrosancti Œcumenici Concilii Vaticani II Instauratum Auctoritate Pauli PP. VI Promulgatum (Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, MCMLXIX), p. 117.
12. Merriam Webster Dictionary, Harem
13. National Geographic News, Valentine’s Day: Why Do We Celebrate It? (Hint: Naked Romans), February 13, 2012
14. Flowerexperts, Red Rose Info
15. Encyclopedia Britannica, Cupid 16. This image was first published on Flickr. Original image by Carole Raddato. Uploaded by Carole Raddato, published on 13 May 2015 under the following license: Creative Commons: Attribution-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.