Many Contributions to Valentine's Day

Every February 14th lovers and friends flood the United States Postal Service with Valentine's Day greetings trimmed in red and pink. In addition, jewelry companies use advertisements to convince consumers that purchasing diamonds conveys the Valentine's Day spirit of devotion to loved ones. As people rush to demonstrate their feelings for others through purchases many do not contemplate the history of Valentine's Day. The legend of Valentine's Day dates back hundreds of years to many varieties of the same story. The multiple versions of the same events and long chronology of Valentine's Day history make it almost impossible to factually pinpoint how Valentine's day became popular.

Among the many Valentine's Day cards and love notes one might find the popular image of cupid. Therefore, the origins of Cupid is intrinsic to Valentine's Day history. Cupid is the son of Venus, the Roman goddess of love. Not surprisingly, Cupid's name roughly translates to desire in Latin. According to the legend of Cupid, he has the likeness of a boy that uses arrows to force love on both mankind and the gods.

While Cupid's image marks all kinds of Valentine's Day paraphernalia one would be hard pressed to locate an image of St. Valentine, the man whose life sparked the lover's holiday. According to legend, Valentine was a Catholic man of the church in third century Rome. At the same time the Emperor of Rome, Claudius II, felt concerned about protecting his borders from the Huns, Gauls, Mongolians, and Slavs. The Emperor wanted to ensure the strength of his army and valued the drive of unmarried soldiers. For this reason he prohibited marriage in his land. In response to this law, Valentine enlisted the help of his friend Saint Marius and began to marry young couples in secret. Claudius II grew livid as a result of Valentines defiance and ordered for Valentine to be beaten with clubs and eventually decapitated. Claudius' disgust for the future martyr swelled as Valentine tried to convince the emperor of the virtues in Catholicism as opposed to Roman paganism. This is one chain of events that many believe made Valentine's Day a great holiday.

In prison, Valentine felt inspired by a jailer named Asterius' daughter. The form of inspiration differs depending upon the version of the legend. Some say that Valentine fell in love with the jailers' daughter. Others say that Asterius asked the prisoner to pray over his daughter and relieve her of blindness, a request that Valentine fulfilled. Regardless of the relationship between Valentine, Asterius, and Asterius' daughter the important event took place right before Valentine died. Before executioners dragged Valentine away to his doom he signed a letter to Asterius' daughter "from your Valentine," a phrase that many still use today. Claudius finally had Valentine executed in February of 269 or 270.

According to legend, around 496 a pope named Gelasisus popularized the story of Valentine and Valentine's day in order to sway people away from participation in the Lupercalia festival. During the pagan Lupercalia festival participants placed women's names in a lottery. Men then blindly selected a name, and consequently, a companion for a year. After a years time the process would begin all over again. Church officials did not agree with this practice, and used the history of Valentine to promote habits that aligned with church principles. This version and/or extension of the legend credits church officials more so than cupid or Valentine with the popularity of Valentine's Day.

More recent events not only continue the narrative in Valentine's Day history, but offer other entities and occurrences to credit for the great lover's holiday. Valentine's Day gained widespread fame in seventeenth century Britain. Many British citizens participated in the exchange of personal notes every February. A note sent in 1415 by Charles Duke of Orleans to his wife represents one of the oldest examples of these kinds of activities. New technologies like the printing press prompted accessibility to the tools necessary to participate in the holiday.

In America, years after the printing press sparked a ripple of change throughout the world, Americans learned to appreciate Valentine's Day. Esther Howland became the first person to mass produce valentines trimmed with ribbon and lace in the mid nineteenth century United States. Howland got inspired in her father's stationary and book store. Many credit Howland for sparking the appeal of Valentine's Day. Contemporarily, Valentine's Day falls shortly behind Christmas as the holiday when people send mass amounts of greeting cards to loved ones. Women almost single handedly support the greeting card companies in February since they send the majority of Valentines Day Cards.

People attribute the popularity of Valentine's Day to many legends and events. It is more than likely, however, that Valentine's Day exists as it does today because of a combination of people that include Valentine, Cupid, Claudius, Gelasisus, and Howland.