Card manufacturers love St Valentine’s Day, since it is the second most popular card-sending “holiday” after Christmas.
They don’t care much for the “why”, instead focussing on the “how much”.
Many people do, however, wonder how this day came into being.
Academics and historians have dedicated decades on the subject, but certainty has to date eluded them.
They can’t even agree on who St Valentine actually was.
The Catholic Church recognises at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.
According to History.com one of them was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. “When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death,” reads the website.
But then perhaps another person named Valentine was killed for helping Christians escape Roman prisons . . .
Not the most romantic of legends.
The third possibility was that someone named Valentine, who was already in prison, fell in love with his jailor’s daughter.
“Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed ‘From your Valentine,’ an expression that is still in use today,” continues the website.
While some believe that St Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial (which probably occurred around AD 270), others claim that the Christian church may have decided to place the St Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, Romulus and Remus.
Valentine’s greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages, though written valentines didn’t begin to appear until after 1400. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written in 1415 by Charles, duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London.
History.com concludes: “Today, according to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated 1 billion Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year, making it the second largest card-sending holiday of the year (an estimated 2,6 billion cards are sent for Christmas). Women purchase approximately 85% of all valentines.”
