Valentine’s Day has mysterious origins and little documented evidence, but holidays don’t appear out of nowhere.
Richard Spence, University of Idaho professor of history, said it noticeably became a custom by the late 18th century, particularly in Britain. Prior to that, the first historical connection between Valentine’s Day and anything representing romantic love is in “The Parliament of Fowls” by Geoffrey Chaucer.
“There’s this one throw-away line that on Valentine’s Day is when all the birds get together and pick their mates,” Spence said. “That’s the first thing that you find that connects Valentine’s Day with some sort of mate-picking, romance type of thing, but there’s a problem with that — nowhere in that does he mention Feb. 14.”
The day Chaucer actually wrote about is May 2, which commemorates the marriage of the heir to the British throne, Spence said.
“This is the first thing that makes this connection and keep in mind that Chaucer’s not a historian. He’s a writer. They make stuff up — that’s what writers do,” Spence said.
If Chaucer got the idea from an earlier reference, Spence said, no one’s been able to trace it. Mate-picking may be connected with Valentine’s Day, but linking it to St. Valentine himself is more difficult.
“There were, at one point in time, two St. Valentines connected to Feb. 14 or around then,” Spence said. “They were both early church martyrs. They had been butchered for their beliefs sometime around 200 to 300 A.D. That’s about the only thing anybody knew about them.”
Neither saint was murdered for any kind of thwarted love affair, Spence said. St. Valentine of Rome, however, was associated with the Golden Legends of the Middle Ages.
“That connected with him the reason he was killed was that Emperor Claudius II, in effort to preserve the army … forbid young men from marrying,” Spence said. “He objected to it because the church saw marriage as a blessed union,” Spence said. “That again just seems to be total b.s. from one end to the other. There’s no indication that Claudius whatsoever did that.”
Spence said Valentine’s Day could also be connected with a Roman festival called Lupercalia, which is usually celebrated around February 12 to 15. There are all types of traditions surrounding Lupercalia, but none of them concern romantic love.
Lupercalia, Spence said, was connected to sacrifices of animals and honored the goat gods, Faunus and Lupa. An ancient society called the Brotherhood of the Wolf, Spence said, dressed up in wolf skins, got drunk and ran around.”
Spence said the date might be right, but there’s nothing about romantic love or gift giving, just a sexual element. Spence said another celebration that it could have stemmed from is the pagan Imbolc, but that falls on Feb. 1.
“It all depends on which calendar you use. If you go back to … the Julian calendar, one of the things you find is that the calendar had a problem that it didn’t include leap years. Because of that it tends to fall behind,” Spence said.
She said the old calendar may cause Feb. 14 to fall on Feb. 1 or somewhere around then.
Spence said that’s almost convincing, except Imbloc means the lactating of the ewes, not romantic love.
Another theory is that it came from a French tradition that spread. Spence said aristocratic women of the early 1400s hosted private parties called courts of love or parliaments of love.
“One idea was that they kind of represented themselves as a sort of mock court. They’d bad mouth guys who had apparently done something to offend their wives or mistresses,” Spence said. ” It was connected with this concept of courtly love, the proper behavior that lovers and suitors were supposed to show, and that if men were assumed to have violated this they would call them out on it, and in some cases they would assign them some kind of penance to do, which was apparently to buy some sort of gift.”
UI senior Sarah Grigg has openly opposed Valentine’s Day since she was 15, when she and a friend started wearing green hearts — gangrene — to show how the holiday has rotted from the inside out.
“You get (to) that point in high school where it stops being this sweetness and it starts being this social ‘oh my bf did this, what did your bf do, I’m gonna one up you,'” Grigg said.
She said Valentine’s Day fundraisers were often humiliating and left people feeling excluded or appearing superficial. Grigg said the holiday has evolved into a commercialized, self-indulgent day.
“What I think it should be about is just in general, like love of mankind, love of your family, love of your friends,” Grigg said. “Love has become this self-serving, self-acknowledgment (that) you need to have relationships … Valentine’s Day has become a celebration of how well you’ve made your match versus how much you actually care about somebody.”
Grigg said she’s always felt as if Valentine’s Day is a transition — “if your relationship can survive Valentine’s Day, maybe it’ll survive spring.”
Jordan Stemp, UI senior, said Valentine’s Day can reveal hidden feelings.
“I think that (it) is a good holiday that brings people together and gives them the chance to express their true feelings toward another person in their life,” Stemp said. “Although I feel that (it) is a bit of a singles awareness day as well.”
Stemp said the main purpose of the day is to celebrate love and happiness.
“However, I do not like the fact that it is a holiday that is strictly for those that are in a couple or in love,” Stemp said. “The people that are single are kind of left in the dark.” Valentine’s Day can be bought and sold, Stemp said, and this distracts from the true meaning of the day.
Katherine Aiken, dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences, said there’s more sexuality associated with the day than there used to be.
“I think there are a lot more gender and sexuality associations with Valentine’s Day than there were early on,” Aiken said. “The early kinds of greetings were just that — greetings. They didn’t carry with it these connotations of romantic love, which is a pretty modern notion and certainly a lot of valentines are almost blatantly sexual in nature, heterosexual in the nature.”
Aiken said the day has become a “date event.”
“I mean there (is) lots of literature about people getting depressed on Valentine’s Day if they don’t have a partner of some kind,” Aiken said. “There’s a lot of peer pressure to have a Valentine, even little kids in elementary school. People have done studies about it — if they don’t have as many valentines in the little box then they have issues.”
Valentine’s Day exerts a lot of pressure on younger students, especially those in middle and high school, she said.
“Especially girls who are concerned that somehow their self-esteem and self-identity are tied up to ‘did someone send them flowers at school so everybody else could see,'” Aiken said. “I think there’s pressure on boys too, ‘did they send the right thing, did I send it to the right person.’ I think that’s a lot of stress on 14-year-old kids.”
Aiken said the day has become more about money than genuine compassion.
“I think what it really is about is florists and jewelers and chocolatiers doing what we do — especially in a capitalist, entrepreneurial society — we try to figure out how to make money,” Aiken said. “I actually think that what that means is that Valentine’s Day is much less personal in terms.”
Grigg said Valentine’s Day is just another aisle in Wal-Mart.
“So as far as all of the flowers and cards and the goofy stuffed animals and stuff I mean they’re nice, it’s nice to get them, but I mean not a lot of that stuff actually says reasons to actually care for somebody, or is specifically designed for someone you love,” Grigg said. “It’s not thoughtful. It’s just red.”
Aiken said the holiday sends the wrong message.
“I think it sends a message that you can buy what ought to be an emotional or personal kind of commitment,” Aiken said. “I think it might make people try to measure sentiment by the value of the Valentine gift and that’s too bad.”