very February, across the country, gifts, flowers and candy are exchanged between loved ones. We celebrate Valentine’s Day on February 14- why and who was Valentine? In efforts to prove that Valentine’s is not a “marketing scheme” (despite comments we’ve heard from many husbands and boyfriends!), we decided to do a little research.

Valentine’s Day is celebrated to honor Saint Valentine’s death or burial, believed to have taken place around 270 A.D. What makes St. Valentine so special? No one knows for sure. Here are the possibilities:

• Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than married men, he outlawed marriage for young men- his future soldiers. Valentine thought this was an injustice and performed marriages in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius had him put to death.
• Valentine may have been killed for helping Christians escape harsh Roman prisons where they were often beaten and tortured.
• Valentine actually sent the first “valentine” to himself. While in prison, it is believed that he fell in love with a girl- who may have been the jailer’s daughter. Before his death, it is rumored that he wrote the young girl a letter and signed “From your Valentine.” (Sound familiar?)

The legend of St. Valentine remains a bit cloudy, but each of these legends glorify this man as a sympathetic, heroic, and romantic figure.

In Rome, February was the official start of spring and considered a time for purification. The Romans began a fertility festival on February 15 which involved animal sacrifice and romantic match-making. The young women in the city would put their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would then draw a name out of the urn and become paired with that woman (not too romantic to us yet…). This Roman lottery system was deemed unlawful and thus, does not remain today. Sometime in the 17th century, Great Britain began celebrating Valentine’s Day. By the middle of the 18th century, friends and lovers began to exchange cards and small tokens of their love (NOW we’re talkin’!). Valentine’s Day cards became so popular that by the end of the end of the 18th century, they were mass printed, rather than hand-created. Esther Howland, “the mother of the Valentine,” produced the first Valentine’s greeting cards in the U.S. by adding real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures to ordinary cards.

There ya have it… Valentine’s Day has more history than just that of gift-giving. It’s more than a marketing scheme. We think it is healthy to set aside MANY days of the year, not just February 14, to celebrate the love you share with someone else. Even if you don’t have a significant other, you have friends (maybe even kiddos) that you can make extra “I love you” mention to on this day. Why wait for another 2 weeks? Tell someone special that you love them today!

Special thanks to The History Channel.

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