The bizarre history behind Valentine’s Day

Paige Blakemore Staff Writer

Valentine’s Day is the holiday that couples adore and single people loathe. Before Mariah Carey can even hit the final note in “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” department stores and supermarkets are putting out candy hearts, chocolate boxes, teddy bears and pricy rose bouquets.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) estimates that 52 percent of Americans will celebrate and spend $26 billion, which is about $80 per person, in the U.S. on Valentine’s Day in 2023.

While the holiday is viewed as a mostly sweet gesture today, its origins are as bizarre as they are questionable.

According to “NPR,” the exact origins of the infamous love day are hard to determine, but many historians agree that it is linked to a dark festival called Lupercalia in ancient Rome.

From Feb. 13-15, Romans would sacrifice animals and whip women with their hides, believing it would increase fertility. Men would then draw women’s names from a jar to couple with them for the remainder of the festivities, to put it lightly.

During Lupercalia, on two separate occasions, two men, both by the name of Valentine, were executed on Feb. 14 by Emperor Claudius II. Prior to his death, one of the Valentines signed a heartbreaking goodbye to a woman that read, “From Your Valentine.”

It was Catholic Pope Gelasius I who created

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Saint Valentine’s Day in 496 A.D. to honor both Christian martyrs and cease the pagan festival. As time progressed, writers such as Shakespeare and Geoffery Chaucer, an English poet, helped romanticize and popularize the holiday.

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