Where Did Valentine’s Day Begin?

Well, romantic it wasn’t I can tell you!

Valentines Day was not established until 496 A.D.  But that does not mean that it wasn’t being celebrated, oh no.

In about 300 B.C. the rather creative Romans began to practice a ritual of passage into manhood.  In mid February they held a lottery in which the young men drew names of the eligible teenage girls from a sealed box.  Which ever girl the man picked would be his sexual companion for a year.

Pope Gelasius, as a Christian leader, was understandably unhappy with this practice.  He changed it, placing names of  saints in the box.  Now, both men and women drew form the box and vowed to practice the character of the saint that they chose throughout the year.

The new rules were not really embraced by the males in the population.

Later, a new emperor Claudius, had the brilliant thought that married men mad lousy soldiers so he decreed that soldiers could not be married.

Oops.

This didn’t set well with his troops and they went to a local priest, Valentine, to be married secretly.  When Claudius found out he was rather irritated and decided that Valentine should be stoned, with real stones, and beheaded.

But where did Valentine’s Day cards come from?  They don’t have a great beginning either.  The first was sent in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife.  He was a prisoner in the Tower of London.

Put your wife’s name in a box, and celebrate the way that history decrees.   Just say that you are being traditional.

image:SXC