The Hazy Origins Of St. Valentines Day

The first thing you discover, when you start looking for the origins of Valentines Day, is that there were actually three people known as Saint Valentine. But surely, you would think, there must be a significant element of romance or unrequited love in the life of one of these individuals, which will help narrow things down.

After all, there's got to be a good reason why the day is known as St. Valentines Day. Yet a search for some element like this is pretty much fruitless.

These three saints were honored through the centuries, but in the popular mind there was only one Valentine by the time St. Valentines Day actually began to be celebrated.

People built fictions around the life of this mythical figure, some based in what appears to be fact, in which the Valentine of Rome ran afoul of the Emperor Claudius.

But there are no real love poems or letters in the story, beyond one letter supposedly written to the daughter of Valentine's jailer. The connection with romance simply isn't there, despite the mythologizing.

In the end, the three martyred Valentines had almost nothing to do with the actual history of Valentines Day. What likely happened was that the church, trying to swallow up the pagan Lupercalia fertility festival held in mid-February, used the names of these men to create a toned-down Christian festival to replace it.

Thus St. Valentines Day was born, not from a story of romance in the life of a real person named Valentine, but from the efforts of the church to put forth its own rivals.

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