Having taken Valentine’s Day for granted for many years it came as a shock to me, as I surfed the web, to find that it was not the creation of Hallmark Cards, but a Roman pagan festival, Lupercalia.
To be honest, I knew there was a Saint Valentine, in fact several, but I never really dug into the details before.
It is a cautionary tale, filled with contradictions, as you will see.
The web that is, not St. Valentine’s Day, which will likely survive the many contradictory and sometimes fanciful posts you can find.
Most sites agree that Valentine’s Day had an origin in Rome, and most likely was associated with a pagan holiday. There the trail becomes less clear. One site actually has several origins: “Originally the word Valentine meant the person whose name was picked from a box to be chosen as your sweetheart up until the 1500’s. Then around 1533 it meant the folded piece of paper with your sweetheart’s name on it.” http://www.brownielocks.com/valentinehistory.html The same site goes on to say that it may have originated in during the Roman invasion of France when Roman boys picked girls names from an urn. I guess it was like playing post office and a toga party all in one, but the connection to the French is a little vague.
Not all sites are quite as creative in their explanations. From http://www.history.com/minisites/valentine/viewPage?pageId=882 I learned the basics, the origins in Roman ritual, the existence of at least three Saints Valentine in Roman times, including a priest who defied Claudius’ decree that young men not marry because it weakened them as soldiers. Valentine conducted secret marriages and was condemned to death for the practice. While awaiting execution, so the story goes, he befriended his jailer’s daughter and sent her a love note before his death signed, your Valentine. Well, why not, it was his name, and so I expect she must have been the recipient of the first “Valentine.”
Some sites, including http://wilstar.com/holidays/valentn.htm and http://www.infoplease.com/spot/valentinesdayhistory.html give credit to Pope Gelasius I for introducing a Christian holiday to replace Lupercalia. The former had him suggesting children draw the names of saints from an urn instead of girls, and to spend the rest of the year emulating the saint they drew. The second site admits that no one really knows why the Holy Father picked Valentine, or which Valentine he picked.
Finally, to end my confusion I went to Wikipedia for the real answer. Actually their post, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine's_Day was quite informative. In short I feel confident that there is a Saint Valentine’s Day celebrated on February 14. I also am fairly sure that the exchanging of cards began in the 19th century with handwritten notes, and now a billion cards a year are sent to commemorate it, and of course, love. It does have its origins in the pagan festival of Lupercalia, but the connection is one of timing, not intent. (This is not the only Roman pagan holiday that was adopted by Christians for very different celebrations) I didn’t find a single reference to roses though, or Chicago in the 1920’s in any of the sites I visited.
This exercise was educational in a practical way despite the tongue in cheek tone I adopted in writing about the origins of Valentine’s Day. It is a painless and amusing way to get to the crux of what Wikipedia and the open nature of the web is all about. The reason this is “a cautionary tale” is that I came upon so many unreferenced facts that were fanciful, or misconstrued by their authors. Anyone can post, and for advocates of free speech that is a noble end in itself.
However if you are a student, or a historian the lack of real editing is the other edge of the sword, and the core of the fight between Larry Sanger and Citizendium on the one hand and Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia on the other. I tend to side with the aim of Sanger to have a means of properly vetting the facts of a post, at the expense of having more posts. Wikipedia has, without doubt, cleaned up its act considerably in the last two years, but problems remain.
It may well be that the price we pay for having the internet is learning to take anything that seems nonsensical as just that, nonsense, until proven otherwise. I have been cautioned times without number to know my sources. On the web, frequently that is not really possible. I deliberately chose sites to cite that were funny rather than accurate, but in terms of scholarship that lack of rigor is a real barrier to using net material. I suppose we will simply have to wait and see how the medium develops.
