Are you just on this side of broke after splurging for that “priceless” moment on Valentine’s Day last week? While I’m sure it was worth it, but do you really know why you celebrate Valentine’s Day?

 

Valentine’s Day is the day of St Valentine, commonly attributed to two Christian martyrs with that name; Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni (although there are many other saints of the same name). Valentine of Rome was a priest who was martyred around AD 269 while Valentine of Terni was the bishop of Interamna, who was martyred around AD 197 during the persecution under Emperor Aurelian.

There are several myths surrounding the romanticism of Valentine’s Day and its patron saints.

According to one legend, Valentine himself sent the first "valentine" greeting. It is told that Valentine fell in love with a young girl who visited him while he was in prison. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed "From your Valentine," an expression that we still use today

There is another story about Valentine, who was a priest who refused to follow a decree by Emperor Claudius II, forbidding single men to marry because the emperor believed that married men were poor soldiers. It is said that Valentine continued to celebrate matrimonial rites to single men. When the emperor found out his activities, he threw him to jail.

Although most of the stories related to the Valentines played up on a sympathetic hero, none of the Valentines died a romantic death. Indeed no romantic connotations existed related to Valentine’s Day until the 14th century but by then, the saints and their acts had all but been forgotten.

 

The man responsible for beginning the curse that is Valentine’s Day (for men at least) was Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer started the whole craze by writing the first valentine poem.

“For this was Saint Valentine's Day,
When every bird cometh there to choose his mate...”

Although there is no proof that Chaucer wrote this with any indication that he specifically meant that Valentine’s Day (or that it was on 14 February) or had anything to do with the patron saints of the day, readers have just assumed that it was so. Chaucer actually wrote this poem to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia in 1831.

By the time of the English Renaissance and in Medieval times, Valentine’s Day became highly romanticized. The earliest surviving valentine is a 15th-century rondeau written by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife. Shakespeare himself mentions Valentine’s Day in his play Hamlet;

“To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
And dupp'd the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.”

And so, now you know the history behind Valentine’s Day. It started off as nothing more than a misunderstanding, and snowballed into second largest card giving season in the year (right behind Christmas), with almost one billion cards being exchanged or gifted.

You my friend, have just been let into one of the biggest hoax holidays in human history, and to celebrate, we leave you with one of the most cliché Valentine’s Day poem (which by the way, is actually a nursery rhyme and has nothing to do with Valentine’s Day);

“The rose is red, the violet's blue
The honey's sweet, and so are you
Thou are my love and I am thine
I drew thee to my Valentine
The lot was cast and then I drew
And Fortune said it shou’d be you”