- Everyone thinks they know the origin
of Valentine's Day. According to the most commonly accepted story, Emperor
Claudius of Rome issued a decree forbidding marriage in the year 271. Roman
generals had found that married men did not make very good soldiers, because
they wanted to return as quickly as possible to their wives and children-and
they didn't want to leave them to fight the emperor's battles in the first
place. So Claudius issued his edict that there should be no more marriages,
and all single men should report for duty.
- A priest named Valentine deemed such
a decree an abomination, and he secretly continued to marry young lovers.
When Claudius learned of this extreme act of disobedience to his imperial
command, he ordered the priest dragged off to prison and had him executed
on February 14.
- Father Valentine, the friend of sweethearts,
became a martyr to love and the sanctity of marriage, and when the Church
gained power in the Roman Empire, the Holy See was quick to make him a
- The early Church fathers were well aware
of the popularity of a vast number of heathen gods and goddesses, as well
as the dates of observation of pagan festivals, so they set about replacing
as many of the entities and the holidays as possible with ecclesiastical
saints and feast days. Mid-February had an ancient history of being devoted
to acts of love of a far more passionate and lusty nature than the Church
wished to bless, and the bishops moved as speedily as possible to claim
the days of February 14 through 17 as belonging to Saint Valentine, the
courageous martyr to the ties that bound couples in Christian love.
- February Is for Mating
- Actually, there is no proof that the
good priest Valentine even existed.
- Some scholars trace the period of mid-February
as a time for mating back to ancient Egypt. On those same days of the year
that contemporary lovers devote to St. Valentine, men and women of the
Egyptian lower classes determined their marital partners by the drawing
- But the time of coupling that comes with
the cold nights in February before the spring thaw likely had its true
origin very near where Valentine supposedly met his demise.
- Among the ancient Greeks and Romans,
the Wolf Charmer was called the Lupicinus. Perhaps hearkening back to prehistoric
times, the Lupicinus may well have been an individual tribesman who had
a particular affinity for communicating with wolves. As the tribes developed
agriculture and small villages, it was necessary to have a person skilled
in singing with the wolves and convincing them not to attack their domesticated
animals. The Lupicinus had the ability to howl with the wolves and lead
them away from the livestock pens. In some views, because he also wore
the pelt of a wolf, the Lupicinus also had the power to transform himself
into a wolf if he so desired.
- Rites of the Lupercalia
- The annual Lupercali festival of the
Romans on February 15 was a perpetuation of the ancient blooding rites
of the hunter in which the novice is smeared with the blood of his first
kill. The sacrificial slaying of a goat-representing the flocks that nourished
early humans in their efforts to establish permanent dwelling places-was
followed by the sacrifice of a dog, the watchful protector of a flock that
would be the first to be killed by attacking wolves.
- The blood of the she-goat and the dog
were mixed, and a bloodstained knife was dipped into the fluid and drawn
slowly across the foreheads of two noble-born children. Once the children
had been "blooded," the gore was wiped off their foreheads with
wool that had been dipped in goat milk. As the children were being cleansed,
they were expected to laugh, thereby demonstrating their lack of fear of
blood and their acknowledgment that they had received the magic of protection
against wolves and wolfmen.
- The god Lupercus, represented by a wolf,
would next inspire and command men to behave as wolves, to act as werewolves
during the festival.
- Lupus (wolf) itself is not an authentic
or original Latin word, but was borrowed from the Sabine dialect. Luperca,
the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus, may have given rise to secret
fraternities known as the Luperci, who sacrificed she-goats at the entrances
to their "wolves' dens." For centuries, the Luperci observed
an annual ritual of chasing women through the streets of Roman cities and
beating them with leather thongs.
- Scholars generally agree that such a
violent expression of eroticism celebrated the ancient behavior of primitive
hunting tribes corraling captive women. Once a wolfman had ensnared a woman
with his whip or thong, he would lead her away to be his wife or lover
for as long as the "romance" lasted. Perhaps, as some scholars
theorize, this yearly rite of lashing at women and lassoing them with leather
thongs became a more acceptable substitute for the bloodlust of the Luperci's
latent werewolfism that in days past had seen them tearing the flesh of
innocent victims with their teeth.
- As the Romans grew ever more sophisticated,
the Lupercali would be celebrated by a man binding the lady of his choice
wrist to wrist, and later by passing a billet to his object of desire,
suggesting a romantic rendezvous in some secluded place.
- Christian Marriage
- One can easily see why the early Church
fathers much preferred the union of man and woman to be smiled upon by
St. Valentine, rather than the leering wolf god Lupercus. And, of course,
they encouraged a knot tied securely by the sacred rite of marriage and
blessed by the priest, rather than a fleeting midnight liaison.
- By the Middle Ages, the peasantry in
England, Scotland, and parts of France honored St. Valentine, but their
customs seemed very much to hearken back to ancient Egypt and Rome. On
the evening before Valentine's Day, the young people would gather in a
village meeting place and draw names by chance. Each young woman would
write her name or make her mark on a bit of cloth and place it into a large
urn. Then each of the young men would draw a slip. The girl whose name
or mark was on the piece of cloth became his sweetheart for the year.
- This method of celebrating St. Valentine's
Day quite often led to circumstances and situations that encouraged long-term
and lasting relationships, blessed by the recital of marriage vows in the
local church. If the young couple did not take the necessary steps to become
bound in a church-sanctioned union, the parents of the respective "bride"
and "groom" would actively arrange for the marriage sacrament
to be observed.
- It wasn't long before the peasant method
of utilizing St. Valentine's Day to guarantee the next generation of field
hands, construction workers, and merchants reached the ears of the upper
classes, and the custom became popular among the young men and women of
the aristocracy and the landed gentry. Since the prospect of arranged marriages
between successful families meant far more to the upper classes in Europe
than to the peasantry, parental supervision most often limited the interaction
between their children to be "sweethearts" during Valentine's
- By the late 1400s, the upper classes
of Europe and England would come together in homes to celebrate Valentine's
Day and allow their young men to draw a "valentine" with the
name of a member of the opposite sex, beside whom he would be seated at
a lavish dinner party. Hostesses took advantage of the holiday theme to
express the tradition in colorful decorative schemes.
- Gradually, Valentine's Day came to be
synonymous with the exchange of pretty sentiments, written in flourishes
on scented paper and decorated with hearts, arrows, doves, and cupids-those
little pagan deities maintaining their hold on the ancient holiday. By
the early 1800s, young men were taking care to create symbols of their
passion on elaborate cards that they could offer to "My Valentine."
- Today's Customs
- By the 1850s, Valentine's Day cards were
being manufactured and sold commercially in England, and the custom of
observing the holiday with cards to one's sweetheart became popular in
the United States in the 1860s, around the time of the Civil War.
- Today, of course, we have vast commercial
enterprises centered around St. Valentine's Day, insisting that callow
young men and seasoned husbands must buy their sweetheart a box of candy,
a dozen roses, a diamond ring or necklace, or at least a five-dollar card.
But don't let the slick advertisers fool you with all this talk of a saint
named Valentine who was martyred for love. Remember that it all began with
a hyped-up wolfman smeared in blood chasing the object of his desire with
a leather thong.
- One last word of advice: Forget the whip
and stick with flowers and candy
- Brad Steiger is a professional writer
who deals with the strange and unknown.