The History of Valentine’s Day and How It Came To Be A Lover’s Day

BY DAKALO NEKHUMBE
Feb 4
3 min read

February is a month that has become synonymous with celebrating romantic love. Stores fill up with red and white decorations, and in each direction you turn, you find heart-shaped things. The incredible spike in flower prices is crazy, but it ties into what the month is all about: love. You might wonder, was Valentine’s day always associated with grand gestures of romantic affection? To answer this, let’s dive in and look at what the original Valentine’s day was about.

The name Valentine was a popular name during Roman times and was derived from the adjective valens, which denoted being athletic and robust. In a time that prized athletic physique (because Romans were soldiers), Valentine may have been a great name that displayed the parents’ wish that their child would one day attain what is valued at the time. The Valentine to whom Valentine’s Day is associated is Saint Valentine, who was an Italian bishop martyred on 14 February 269 after his trial before the Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus, who reigned between 268 - 270. Saint Valentine was martyred for his faith in Jesus Christ.

Saint Valentine

While the word martyr has come to be associated with death, that was not the original meaning of the word. The Greek word for martyr was martys, which, when used in a court of law, would have the same idea as the word ‘witness’ in our day. To be a martyr would have been to give direct knowledge of something or to share your experience of people, events or circumstances because you know about them and have witnessed them. The word martyr came to be associated with torturous ways of dying when early Christians would bear witness to Christ and their witness would be met with violent responses.

The reason for these violent reactions? The Romans believed that their gods kept their empire secure, so they demanded that the masses also worship their gods. But Christians refused to worship their gods, so the Romans perceived Christians as a threat to the success of their empire. So, what did the Romans do to ensure the survival of their empire? Perceiving Christians to be an anti-Roman threat, they convicted and killed Christians in the most torturous ways.

Why Saint Valentine was martyred

Saint Valentine was martyred because he had witnessed that there was no greater love than that someone lay down their life for their friends, which Jesus Christ did when He died for sinners in their place to reconcile them to God. Having witnessed such a great sacrificial love, how then could he deny its existence by worshipping Roman gods? The accounts that exist of Saint Valentine state that his body was hastily buried, but that a few nights passed before his associates took his body and returned it to his home town of Terni in Central Italy.

So how did Valentine's day become associated with romantic love? Well during the Middle Ages fabricated stories about Saint Valentine began to circulate, which highlight him being remembered as a martyr. A medieval writer named Geoffrey Chaucer, who lived between 1340 - 1400, penned a romantic poem called Parliament of Fowls and in it he linked romantic love to Saint Valentine. In the poem, birds gather to choose their mates and a line from the poem linking Saint Valentine is, “for this was on Saint Valentine’s day, when every foul cometh there to choose his mate".

What is unknown is how greatly Chaucer influenced the link between lovers and Saint Valentine’s Day, but the celebration existed as early as the fifteenth century when lovers would send cute love notes on Saint Valentine’s Day.

How Valentine’s Day went from a day of remembering a martyr to a day of celebrating romantic love is unknown, but one thing that remains central to Valentine’s Day is that it centres on love.