Valentine’s Day was not always love, hearts and relationships. It was actually quite the opposite. It was a bit darker from how we celebrate it today, as in it involved a few sacrifices.
The Valentines we know today was called The Feast of Lupercalia that lasted between February 13 to 15. In the article The Dark Origins of Valentine’s Day by Arnie Seipel it says, “The Roman romantics “were drunk…” says Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Young women would actually lineup for the men to hit them, Lenski says. They believed this would make them fertile.” They would also have a thing called a matchmaking lottery where men would line up and draw names of women from a jar and that would be their lady for the celebration unless the man wanted the woman to be hers forever.
The article also says, “Emperor Claudius II executed two men — both named Valentine — on Feb. 14 of different years in the 3rd century A.D. Their martyrdom was honored by the Catholic Church with the celebration of St. Valentine’s Day.” and that’s where we get our holiday name.
As years went on, the holiday began to get sweeter. This was because Shakespeare romanticized it in his writings. It started to grow popular throughout Europe and it became a holiday of love. People started giving their loved ones cards as tokens of love with kind words written in them.The tradition then followed to the New World and became a worldwide love holiday.
Over the years the holiday began to mostly be all about the business and the money. “Valentine’s Day sales reached $17.6 billion last year…” said Seipel and and this year it got one billion dollars higher because of all the couples that spoil each other with love notes and gifts. That is how we got to the Valentines Day we know today.