The Origins of Valentine's Day
In ancient Rome the festivals of February 14 and 15 overlapped and in the end the first became lost in the second.
JUNO
February 14 was the festival of the Goddess of creative youth and childbirth, Juno Regina. On this day, boys would draw the names of girls and would become the girls' gallants for the next year. This often resulted in marriage.
LUPERCALIA
February 15 was by far more exciting and evidently sucked the festival of Juno into itself. This was the feast of Lupercalia, celebrating the ancient rural God Faunus. Faunus was God of animal life, husbandry,
hunting, and herding, as well as the guardian of the secret lore of nature.
Palatine Hill held a cave sacred to Faunus. According to legend this is where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf. The Latin word "lupus" means cave; the cave was called Lupercal. Hence the name of the festival.
During this festival the priests of Lupercus, the Luperci, would sacrifice a goat and a dog at the mouth of this cave. Then, with the bloodstained knife, they would anoint the foreheads of two selected young
men, wiping off the blood with wool dipped in milk. Then, according to ritual, the youths would laugh.
Next, the Luperci, naked except a loincloth made of goatskins, would run the circle of Palatine hill, waving strips of skin from the sacrificed goat. Women would throw themselves in front of the Luperci and be
whipped by them on the palms of their hands. This was to produce fertility.(Note - these goatskin thongs were called februa, and this aspect of the ritual was februatio, a possible derivation of "February." Februa
also refers to any expiatory offering. We cannot know which came first.)
VALENTINUS
Valentinus was a Roman and a Christian priest in the days of Claudius II. He gave aid and comfort to the Christian martyrs during the persecution of this time. Of course, this was a crime and he was arrested.
After a year in prison he was taken before the emperor, whom he tried to convert to Christianity. The emperor, in turn, tried to convert him to the Roman gods. He responded, "I say of thy gods none other thing but that they were men mortal and merchant and full of ordure and evil." Valentinus was immediately condemned to be beaten with clubs, then stoned, and finally beheaded.
Legend has it that while awaiting execution Valentinus formed a friendship with the blind daughter of his jailer, whose sight he was able to restore. His farewell message to her was signed, "From your Valentine."
The earliest source of information about St. Valentine, The Nuremburg Chronicles, puts his feast day on the sixteenth of March. When this was translated from Latin to German the date was changed to February 14. The year of his martyrdom is given as 270.
THE SPREAD OF THE CHURCH
When the Christian church began to spread throughout Europe, they tried to make conversion as easy as possible by adopting modified forms of as many old customs as they could. Lupercalia was no exception. The clergy substituted names of saints for those of the young girls. Each was to emulate the saint picked for the next year. As this drawing was on February fourteenth the association with St. Valentine was fixed.
The old custom pairing boys with girls has continued despite the early Christian attempt to stop it. At one point in time the young pairs gave gifts to each other. Later, only the boy to the girl. Finally, we have the custom of sending "valentines."
Description of Valentine's Day from The Origins of Popular Superstitions and Customs, by T. Sharper Knowlson. Written in 1910, published in
1930.
Although St. Valentine's Day is only observed in very few places in the United kingdom, and tends toward a speedy disappearance, it is a custom which, for this reason, is specially worth notice, inasmuch as some of us who are by no means old can remember the days when the sending of "Valentines" by a certain section of society was quite a festival in itself - almost as vigorous as the fashion of 'Xmas cards is at the moment. St. Valentine was a Christian bishop, who is alleged to have suffered martyrdom in 271 A.D., on February 14th. Roman youths and maidens on this day were accustomed to select partners, and the Church, fulfilling its work of replacing heathen divinities by ecclesiastical saints, allotted the day to St. Valentine. Butler in his Lives of the Saints says: -- "To abolish the heathen, lewd, superstitious customs of boys drawing the names of girls, in honour of their goddess Februata Juno, on the 15th of February, several zealous Pastors substituted the names of Saints in billets given on that day. St. Frances de Sales severely forbad the custom of Valentines, or giving boys in writing the names of girls to be admired and attended on by them; and to abolish it, he changed
it into giving billets with the names of certain Saints, for them to honour and imitate in a particular manner."
Apparently the effort was not altogether successful, for the specimen Valentine verses that have come down to us from old English times, as well as some of the pictures which used to be flaunted in shop-windows in the last century, testify to the intimate connection between the Pagan idea and its attempted Christian reconstruction. St. Valentine, as a good man, can have no reason to thank the Church for its attention to his name.
Gay has left us a poetical description of some rural ceremonies used on the morning of this day:
Last Valentine, the day when birds of kind,
Their paramours with mutual chirpings find
I early rose, just at the break of day,
Before the sun had chas'd the stars away;
A-field I went, amid the morning dew,
To milk my kine (for so should house-wives do).
Thee first I spied, and the first swain we see,
In spite of Fortune, shall our true love be.
Evidently, the women-folk used to take Valentine's Day somewhat seriously. Witness the following from an old book - the Connoisseur - "Last Friday was Valentine Day, and the night before I got five bay-leaves, and pinned four of them to the four corners of my pillow, and the fifth to the middle; and then, if I dreamt of my sweetheart, Bettie said we should be married before the year was out. But to make it more sure I boiled an egg hard, and took out the yolk and filled it with salt; and when I went to bed ate it, shell and all, without speaking or drinking after it. We also wrote our lovers' names upon bits of paper, and rolled them up in clay, and put them into water: and the first that rose up was to be our Valentine. Would you think it, Mr Blossom was my man. I lay a-bed and shut my eyes all the morning till he came to our house; for I would not have seen another man before him for all the world."
The dying of St. Valentine's Day is a testimony to the growth of a sense of restraint and fine feeling. But even this year (1910) in London one can see the old vulgar Valentine shown in shop windows.
In ancient Rome the festivals of February 14 and 15 overlapped and in the end the first became lost in the second.
JUNO
February 14 was the festival of the Goddess of creative youth and childbirth, Juno Regina. On this day, boys would draw the names of girls and would become the girls' gallants for the next year. This often resulted in marriage.
LUPERCALIA
February 15 was by far more exciting and evidently sucked the festival of Juno into itself. This was the feast of Lupercalia, celebrating the ancient rural God Faunus. Faunus was God of animal life, husbandry,
hunting, and herding, as well as the guardian of the secret lore of nature.
Palatine Hill held a cave sacred to Faunus. According to legend this is where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf. The Latin word "lupus" means cave; the cave was called Lupercal. Hence the name of the festival.
During this festival the priests of Lupercus, the Luperci, would sacrifice a goat and a dog at the mouth of this cave. Then, with the bloodstained knife, they would anoint the foreheads of two selected young
men, wiping off the blood with wool dipped in milk. Then, according to ritual, the youths would laugh.
Next, the Luperci, naked except a loincloth made of goatskins, would run the circle of Palatine hill, waving strips of skin from the sacrificed goat. Women would throw themselves in front of the Luperci and be
whipped by them on the palms of their hands. This was to produce fertility.(Note - these goatskin thongs were called februa, and this aspect of the ritual was februatio, a possible derivation of "February." Februa
also refers to any expiatory offering. We cannot know which came first.)
VALENTINUS
Valentinus was a Roman and a Christian priest in the days of Claudius II. He gave aid and comfort to the Christian martyrs during the persecution of this time. Of course, this was a crime and he was arrested.
After a year in prison he was taken before the emperor, whom he tried to convert to Christianity. The emperor, in turn, tried to convert him to the Roman gods. He responded, "I say of thy gods none other thing but that they were men mortal and merchant and full of ordure and evil." Valentinus was immediately condemned to be beaten with clubs, then stoned, and finally beheaded.
Legend has it that while awaiting execution Valentinus formed a friendship with the blind daughter of his jailer, whose sight he was able to restore. His farewell message to her was signed, "From your Valentine."
The earliest source of information about St. Valentine, The Nuremburg Chronicles, puts his feast day on the sixteenth of March. When this was translated from Latin to German the date was changed to February 14. The year of his martyrdom is given as 270.
THE SPREAD OF THE CHURCH
When the Christian church began to spread throughout Europe, they tried to make conversion as easy as possible by adopting modified forms of as many old customs as they could. Lupercalia was no exception. The clergy substituted names of saints for those of the young girls. Each was to emulate the saint picked for the next year. As this drawing was on February fourteenth the association with St. Valentine was fixed.
The old custom pairing boys with girls has continued despite the early Christian attempt to stop it. At one point in time the young pairs gave gifts to each other. Later, only the boy to the girl. Finally, we have the custom of sending "valentines."
Description of Valentine's Day from The Origins of Popular Superstitions and Customs, by T. Sharper Knowlson. Written in 1910, published in
1930.
Although St. Valentine's Day is only observed in very few places in the United kingdom, and tends toward a speedy disappearance, it is a custom which, for this reason, is specially worth notice, inasmuch as some of us who are by no means old can remember the days when the sending of "Valentines" by a certain section of society was quite a festival in itself - almost as vigorous as the fashion of 'Xmas cards is at the moment. St. Valentine was a Christian bishop, who is alleged to have suffered martyrdom in 271 A.D., on February 14th. Roman youths and maidens on this day were accustomed to select partners, and the Church, fulfilling its work of replacing heathen divinities by ecclesiastical saints, allotted the day to St. Valentine. Butler in his Lives of the Saints says: -- "To abolish the heathen, lewd, superstitious customs of boys drawing the names of girls, in honour of their goddess Februata Juno, on the 15th of February, several zealous Pastors substituted the names of Saints in billets given on that day. St. Frances de Sales severely forbad the custom of Valentines, or giving boys in writing the names of girls to be admired and attended on by them; and to abolish it, he changed
it into giving billets with the names of certain Saints, for them to honour and imitate in a particular manner."
Apparently the effort was not altogether successful, for the specimen Valentine verses that have come down to us from old English times, as well as some of the pictures which used to be flaunted in shop-windows in the last century, testify to the intimate connection between the Pagan idea and its attempted Christian reconstruction. St. Valentine, as a good man, can have no reason to thank the Church for its attention to his name.
Gay has left us a poetical description of some rural ceremonies used on the morning of this day:
Last Valentine, the day when birds of kind,
Their paramours with mutual chirpings find
I early rose, just at the break of day,
Before the sun had chas'd the stars away;
A-field I went, amid the morning dew,
To milk my kine (for so should house-wives do).
Thee first I spied, and the first swain we see,
In spite of Fortune, shall our true love be.
Evidently, the women-folk used to take Valentine's Day somewhat seriously. Witness the following from an old book - the Connoisseur - "Last Friday was Valentine Day, and the night before I got five bay-leaves, and pinned four of them to the four corners of my pillow, and the fifth to the middle; and then, if I dreamt of my sweetheart, Bettie said we should be married before the year was out. But to make it more sure I boiled an egg hard, and took out the yolk and filled it with salt; and when I went to bed ate it, shell and all, without speaking or drinking after it. We also wrote our lovers' names upon bits of paper, and rolled them up in clay, and put them into water: and the first that rose up was to be our Valentine. Would you think it, Mr Blossom was my man. I lay a-bed and shut my eyes all the morning till he came to our house; for I would not have seen another man before him for all the world."
The dying of St. Valentine's Day is a testimony to the growth of a sense of restraint and fine feeling. But even this year (1910) in London one can see the old vulgar Valentine shown in shop windows.
whatmoonsongs:
Happy Valentine's Day! hee hee hee... well, i want to move at the end of March... my boss is doesn't want me to go because he's jealous that he's not in a position to move back yet 
I totally understand, but, whatever! I'm leaning toward my original plan of moving out to the desert (Twentynine Palms/Joshua Tree) at the beginning of April. To be honest, I'm a little tired of this job. I was considering San Diego because the job security would be nice, but... I'm in the mood to go somewhere a little quieter... right now I'm living in the heart of downtown Seattle... my apartment is literally a stone's throw from a major Interstate... just feel like changing things up a bit, you know? What've you been up to?
I totally understand, but, whatever! I'm leaning toward my original plan of moving out to the desert (Twentynine Palms/Joshua Tree) at the beginning of April. To be honest, I'm a little tired of this job. I was considering San Diego because the job security would be nice, but... I'm in the mood to go somewhere a little quieter... right now I'm living in the heart of downtown Seattle... my apartment is literally a stone's throw from a major Interstate... just feel like changing things up a bit, you know? What've you been up to?