Valentine’s Day is upon us again.
It is a time of candlelit dinners, heart-shaped candy boxes from the drugstore,
and (depending on your relationship status) watching old romantic comedies
while you drink wine by yourself.
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It is a great celebration. But where did it
come from? And why do we care about it so much?
People have been trying to answer those
questions for a long time. The New York Times pondered the day’s origin in 1853,
but called it “one of those mysterious historical or antiquarian problems which
are doomed never to be solved”.
Well, it is 2023 so we are going to try
again. Here is a brief guide to some of the major Valentine’s Day theories,
from ancient Rome to the present.
It could have been a Roman Bacchanal.
The most common explanation for how
Valentine’s Day came to be is the ancient festival of Lupercalia, a raucous,
wine-fueled fertility rite in which Roman men and women paired off. This theory
has appeared in news articles for decades.
Lupercalia was celebrated for centuries in
the middle of February and eventually, as the Roman Empire became less pagan
and more Christian, was transformed into a celebration honoring Saint
Valentine.
According to one popular tale, printed in the Boston Globe in 1965, Saint Valentine was arrested after he defied an order by Emperor Claudius that forbade Roman soldiers from getting married.
Noel Lenski, a Yale historian, told
National Public Radio in 2011 that the festival was known for its debauchery
and nudity until Pope Gelasius I made it a Christian holiday in the fifth
century.
“It was a little more of a drunken revel,
but the Christians put clothes back on it,” Lenski said. “That didn’t stop it
from being a day of fertility and love.”
There is little reliable information about
the life of Saint Valentine. The New York Times reported in 1923 that the day
may in fact celebrate two different saints named Valentine who were made into a
composite character. (Neither one of them sounded particularly romantic.)
According to one popular tale, printed in the
Boston Globe in 1965, Saint Valentine was arrested after he defied an order by
Emperor Claudius that forbade Roman soldiers from getting married.
Saint Valentine was later beheaded for his
religious zeal, a death that Roman men decided to celebrate by pulling the
names of eligible young ladies out of an urn. “This custom persisted for many
years and eventually found its way into Germany and England,” The Globe
reported.
Or a chance to celebrate spring in
February.
Not everyone is convinced of that version
of events.
Jack B. Oruch, an English professor at the
University of Kansas who died in 2013, studied Valentine’s Day as part of his
research into poet Geoffrey Chaucer. He was convinced that Chaucer was the
source of our modern ideas about Saint Valentine.
In a 1981 academic article, “St. Valentine,
Chaucer, and Spring in February”, Oruch argued there was no documented evidence
of a romantic tradition linked to Saint Valentine before Chaucer wrote the
poems “Parlement of Foules” and “The Complaint of Mars” in the late 14th
century.
Chaucer may have connected Saint Valentine
to romance because it was convenient: His saint’s day, on February 14, took
place at a time when Britons in the 14th century thought spring began, with
birds starting to mate and plants beginning to bloom, Oruch wrote.
From Chaucer’s perspective, an added perk
was that Europeans at the time thought “Valentine” was a nice-sounding name.
Other saints who were celebrated in mid-February had names with less poetic
appeal: St. Scholastica, St. Austrebertha, St. Eulalia, and St. Eormenhild.
It is a compelling theory, but Oruch knew
it was tough to compete with popular stories about romantic Romans.
“It’s a time of self-appraisal and appraisal of your situation,” she said, especially if you are single. “This is a day when one reflects on what you’ve got and what you don’t have.”
“The article made no difference,” he said
in a 2011 interview, in reference to his research. “All the articles about
Valentine’s Day each year repeat the same myths.”
It is time to put yourself out there.
Whatever its origins, Valentine’s Day is
now a big deal.
It can be stressful for some people because
“it’s a night with very profound extra meaning that hits primitive parts of the
brain linked with wanting”, said Helen Fisher, a Rutgers University physical
anthropologist who studies the evolution of human sexuality.
She said the need for love was “a basic
brain system that evolved millions of years ago,” long before Lupercalia.
“It’s a time of self-appraisal and
appraisal of your situation,” she said, especially if you are single. “This is
a day when one reflects on what you’ve got and what you don’t have.”
It is also a day to spend money. Americans
are projected to spend $26 billion on Valentine’s Day this year, up from $23.9
billion in 2022, according to the National Retail Federation. More than half of
consumers plan to celebrate and will spend an average of $192.80, the group
said.
Most of that will go toward romantic
partners, but a sizable chunk will be spent on friends, co-workers, classmates,
and even pets. That reflects a change in the holiday from a celebration of
romantic partners to “an everybody-is-included romp” that celebrates different
kinds of affection and attachment, Fisher said.
So, what if your only Valentine happens to
be your cat?
Fisher, whose work involves using scanners
to study the brains of both the romantically committed and the recently dumped,
said there is someone out there for everyone.
“This brain system is like a sleeping cat,”
she said. “It can awaken at any time at all. You just have to get out there.”
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