Saint Valentine’s Day is a romantic holiday celebrated every year on February 14th, mostly just in North America, the UK, France, and Australia. It’s a day for red roses and heart shaped boxes of chocolates, love letters, and romantic candlelit dinner dates. School children exchange little paper valentines with cartoon characters and cringy puns, carefully selected for each classmate so as not to send the wrong message. It’s fun and lighthearted, a warm and welcome reprieve from the dull frigidity of mid winter. And of course we celebrate because of St. Valentine. St. Valentine who… well, actually no one really knows for sure who St. Valentine was or what he even did. In fact, the origins of Valentine’s Day are incredibly murky and difficult to trace. Let’s fix that. 

 

Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. As promised, I’m taking a break from Black History month this week to talk about Valentine’s Day because it is yet another holiday that we just straight up don’t understand. It is kind of blowing my mind how many holidays are celebrated, I mean really wholeheartedly celebrated by the masses and yet we have no idea what we’re actually celebrating or where any of it came from. It’s really wild. 

 

Most historians believe the pagan precursor to Valentine’s Day was the Roman festival of Lupercalia. So, we’re seeing this again, this whole pagan festival day turned Catholic holiday. Yeah, they’re pulling that trick again with Valentine’s Day. This is how the church very passive aggressively got Romans to switch from the old pagan, polytheistic religion of ancient Rome - you know like Zeus and Aphrodite and such except the Romans used their planet names Jupiter and Venus and I know the planets were named after the gods and not the other way around. Anyway, bunch of Gods whatever you want to call them. Not cool in Christianity. So many pagan holidays were transformed into Catholic holidays. We’ve already seen it with Halloween and Christmas and there will be more. 

 

So Lupercalia is a fun one. It was rather debaucherous. I feel like pagans had way more fun and the church was just like the wettest blanket putting out all the little fun fires. I mean it’s fine, church is good and stuff but, man they’re no fun. Anyway Lupercalia involved a lot of drunkenness and a lot of nudity. It was a fertility festival so yeah I guess drunkenness and nudity both kind of help in that regard. And you an already see where the Valentine’s Day notion of romantic love sort ties in here. 

 

According to a Time Magazine article by Kat Moon quote “What is known about Lupercalia is that it started with an act of sacrifice. Priests of the god Lupercus, called the Luperci, would take off their clothes and slaughter goats in the Lupercal, the cave that Roman legend held to have been the location where city founders Romulus and Remus were nursed by a wolf. The Luperci would then cut the goat’s skin into strips and run around the Palantine Hill in Rome, striking women with the goat’s skin.” end quote. Okay, this actually doesn’t sound fun at all, this sounds really weird and freaky. I take back what I said. They also sacrificed a dog which is not cool. The goat was for fertility and the dog was for purification. 

 

And then yeah so they ran around drunk and naked slapping women with the goat skin. The priests. We’re talking about priests here. But, most historians believe it was more of a symbolic beating rather than actually, violently whipping these women, like more playful. And theories suggest that the women would have actually been into it, voluntarily lining up to be slapped with the goat skin by these naked priests because it was supposed to increase fertility. There’s actually artwork, mosaics and relief sculptures depicting this ritual and the women do seem to be kind of happily playing along. But, I don’t know, ancient Rome was incredibly patriarchal. I don’t know how much they actually loved being slapped by naked priests in the streets and I’m not certain they could have even voiced any dislike for it. I think I’d stay home for that one. And, I mean, some research suggests that even the Romans themselves were kind of confused by the whole naked priest goat skin thing. I truly DK. 

 

There are other theories about Lupercalia that they did sort of a matchmaking lottery where men would draw the names of women out of a hat or whatever and they would be paired together for the year and that many of these matches ended in marriage. But a lot of scholars don’t think that ever happened. Some point to the fact that there would have been way more women than men in ancient Rome and that it just wouldn’t really make sense logistically. And to me, I don’t know, the randomness of it doesn’t really make sense. That you would tie yourself to a random woman, could be anyone, for the whole year. I just think relationships and marriages were much more strategic back then. It’s a fun idea. It sounds like the plot of a historical romance novel which confirms my suspicions even more that it didn’t actually happen. 

 

According to that Time magazine article, the earliest historical records of Lupercalia come from the 3rd century BC and the last records are from the 5th century AD so the 400s. That is around the same time that Pope Gelasius I (Jell-ay-shee-us) created Saint Valentine’s Day as an official holiday of the Catholic Church. Lupercalia was typically celebrated on February 15th and Valentine’s Day was, of course, February 14th. 

 

Okay, so Valentine was a Catholic saint. He must have been important enough for Gelasius to give him his own holiday. Who was he? Well, we don’t really know, strangely enough. There are actually three St. Valentines recognized by the Catholic Church and two of them were killed by the same guy, Emperor Claudius II both on February 14th apparently but in different years of the third century. They were Christian martyrs, which is why they were eventually canonized as saints but we don’t know which of them is the namesake of Valentine’s Day. Or maybe it’s both of them? I mean if they were both martyred on February 14th by the same guy. That’s kind of crazy right? Now I’m wondering if it was somehow just one guy and one record of his death had the year wrong so people started thinking it happened twice to two different people. I don’t know. But here are some of the legends about the St. Valentines. 

 

One legend says Valentine was a priest living in ancient Rome in the third century. Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those who were married with children so he outlawed the marriage of young men. Valentine defied this new law and secretly continued to perform marriages for young lovers. When he was found out, he was killed for violating the law. Another legend points to St. Valentine of Terni who was a bishop. Claudius also killed this guy but it was for helping people escape from Roman prisons where were often beaten and tortured. Another legend says Valentine actually sent the first valentine himself when he was imprisoned and fell in love with his jailor’s daughter. He supposedly wrote her a letter signed “from your Valentine” which is allegedly where the expression comes from. That one doesn’t feel true to me though, I think I’m calling baloney on that one. 

 

But whoever Valentine was, whatever he did, Gelasius chose to give him a day on February 14th and, in the centuries since, he has become a romantic figure sparking legends about heroic, passionate deeds. According to History.com, by the Middle Ages, Valentine had become one of the most popular saints in England and France. Which is kind of crazy to me. Like, we don’t even know who this guy was or what he did. We don’t even know which one of the handful of Saint Valentines we’re honoring, but he’s our favorite, okay. 

 

At first and for a long time, Valentine’s Day was just a church holiday. It wasn’t the romantic secular holiday that it is today. It wasn’t really romantic at all, except for its ties to Lupercalia, the fertility festival. Because it basically replaced it, those pagan Roman Lupercalia celebrators probably carried over some vibe of romantic love since they were all focused on fertility and matchmaking and whatnot. But also, around the same time that Gelasius created Valentine’s Day, the Normans were celebrating a holiday called Galatin’s Day. Galatin meant “lover of women” and it sounds incredibly close to Valentine. Galatin’s Day, Valentine’s Day. I have a hard time believing that one wasn’t inspired by the other somehow. It’s weird. There’s too many weird coincidences with this one. Two St. Valentine’s both executed by the same guy, both on February 14th. Galatin Valentine. Mmm.

 

I don’t know what to believe. But I do know that some pretty big names in literature helped to popularize Valentine’s Day and morph it into the romantic holiday that it is today. In the late 1300s, a poet named Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a 699 line poem called “The Parlement of Foules,” quite a long poem. Some historians believe it was written to commemorate the marriage of King Richard II and Anne of Bohemia in 1382. But in this poem, Chaucer describes a meeting between birds that takes place on Valentine’s Day, February 14th. The birds have a conference, essentially, in order to choose their mates. And so after this poem, people began to think of Valentine’s Day as the day that birds choose their mates. Later, William Shakespeare refers to Valentine’s Day three times in his plays, expanding on Chaucer’s romantic bird notion of the holiday as a day to celebrate love and romance. And so we start to see Valentine’s Day transform into what it is today. 

 

As far as sending Valentines, like little love letters and such, there is some disagreement about when exactly that started. A lot of sources will tell you the first valentine was sent by Charles, Duke of Orleans in 1415 but I think they’re dead wrong on that and I’ll tell you why and my evidence comes from the British Library Medieval Manuscripts Blog. So who was Charles anyway? He was a French prince. He was born in 1394 and he was the grandson of France’s King Charles V and the nephew of that guy’s successor King Charles VI. He inherited the title Duke of Orleans when he was 14 years old after his father was assassinated. When he was 21 he fought at the battle of Agincourt (ay-gen-court) which the French lost to the English. It was an underdog victory for the English who were outnumbered by French forces so, on the flip side, it was a fairly catastrophic loss for the French. Charles, as the nephew of the then king, was taken prisoner on the battlefield and hauled back to England where he was kept as a political prisoner for 25 years. A lot of that time he spent imprisoned in the Tower of London. 

 

So, 25 years as a prisoner of England, the man has a lot of time on his hands. He takes to writing to poetry and he’ll write over 500 poems in his lifetime, most of them during his captivity. So the rumor goes that Charles wrote the first official valentine to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and that this document is housed at the British Library. Well the British Library does have it but they’re calling BS on the rest of those claims. First of all, he didn’t write it while he was imprisoned, he wrote it after he was released and had returned to France. Much less romantic. It is also not a love letter to his wife, at all, it’s a poem. According to the British Library quote “Despite being addressed to ‘my very sweet Valentine’, the poem is not a personal message of affection like today’s Valentine’s cards. It actually refers to the courtly practice of holding a lottery on St Valentine’s Day in which everyone was assigned a partner, generally not their husband or wife, who was supposed to be their ‘Valentine’ for the year. This was a rather artificial enactment of the concept of courtly love, in which knights were supposed to devote themselves to the service of a married lady. In the poem, Charles excuses himself from the custom, apologetically telling his allotted Valentine that he’s too old and tired. By Charles’ time, Valentine’s Day poetry was already a well-established genre with examples by Geoffrey Chaucer, Oton de Grandson, John Gower, Christine de Pizan and John Lydgate, among others. It was the fact that such poems were already well-known that meant Charles could play with the audience’s expectations by writing what is essentially an anti-Valentine.” end quote. An anti-Valentine that history twisted into the first ever valentine. But, Charles did do a lot to help shape our modern perception of Valentines Day. Around 14 of his poems are about Valentine’s Day in a way that associates it with love and desire. 

 

So, if Charles didn’t send the first Valentine, though, then who did? Well, a woman of course, which is why we don’t know about it. And this is kind of a sweet love story really. This one takes place in 1477. Margery Brews, who was upper middle class, had fallen in love with an English nobleman named John Paston. They were really quite smitten with each other and they wanted to get married. So they started sending a series of love letters to each other, making plans, dreaming about a future together. In one letter that Margery sent in February of 1477, she refers to John as her quote “right well-beloved Valentine” and signed the letter as “your Valentine, Margery Brews.” This is also in the British Library collection and they are claiming that this was actually the first official Valentine sent. 

 

So what happened to these love birds? Well both of their families opposed the marriage. Margery’s father felt she could find a more financially advantageous match and John’s older brother was offended that John had not asked his permission before making plans to marry Margery. He thought Margery’s dowry was way too low. In one of her letters, Margery actually wrote to John quote “I want you to understand clearly that my father refuses to part with any more money than a £100 and 50 marks in this business, which is very far from fulfilling your wishes.” And she tells him that, if he’s not satisfied with that amount, quote “not to take the trouble to visit any more on this business.” Basically saying, this is the best I can do, if it’s not good enough then I guess we’re done. 

 

But, luckily, Margery’s mother, Elizabeth, stepped in with her motherly powers of persuasion. She wrote a letter to John herself saying quote “On Friday it is Saint Valentine’s Day, and every bird chooses itself a mate. And if you would like to come on Thursday night ... I trust God that you will speak to my husband, and I will pray that we will bring the matter to a conclusion.” end quote. And, because mothers are truly all powerful, Margery and John were married a few months later. Papa Brews must have known that if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. These letters are now part of the British Library collection, part of an archive known as the Paston letters that includes 1,000 letters and documents that quote “provide a fascinating insight into the private lives of the Paston family of Norfolk over a period of 70 years” which is super cool and I love that the collection includes this precious love story and the first official valentine. 

 

So sending paper valentine love letters became a thing in England way before it was a thing in the US. It wasn’t until the mid 1800s that the tradition of sending valentines started to take off in the US and that is also thanks to a woman and her story is really cool and inspiring. This comes from an article called “Esther Howland and the Business of Love” by Ellen Terrell in the Library of Congress Blogs. Terrel describes Esther as quote “‘New England’s first career woman…’ a visionary artist and entrepreneur who popularized Valentine’s Day cards in the United States.” end quote. Esther Howland was born in 1828 in Massachusetts. Her father was a bookseller and stationer. So a stationer, cause I had to look it up, is someone who sells paper, pens, and other writing materials - stationary, right, he sold stationary. My sister Hannah would love this job. He owned a company called S.A. Howland and Sons that did this selling books and stationary thing. 

 

In 1847, Esther received a valentine that was sent from a friend in the UK where valentines were already kind of a thing. It was a pretty little lacy paper thing with a sweet message on it. She showed it to her friends and they all thought it was charming but Esther, as the daughter of a stationer, saw even more potential in it. She saw the way her friends oohed and ahed over it and she thought “hey, there could be a market for this sort of thing here.” So she persuaded her father to order some fancy stationary supplies - lace paper, paper flowers, that sort of thing and she used them to make a dozen valentines. She goes to her brother Allen who is one of the sons in S.A. Howland and Sons. Allen is set to go on a sales trip for the business and Esther convinces him to take the 12 valentine samples with him to see if anyone is interested in buying them. She estimates Allen might get orders for around $200 worth of these handmade valentine cards. But, she is completely blown away when he comes back from his trip with $5,000 worth of orders. 

 

So now she has a lot of work to do. She sets up basically a factory in a third floor bedroom of her family home and recruits a group of friends to come help her fill these orders. According to Terrell quote “Esther cut the basic design for the individual valentines, and the assembled group carefully copied each card. Each young lady was assigned a special task; one cut out pictures and kept them assorted in boxes and another made the backgrounds, passing them to yet another worker who gave the card further embellishment. By the end of 1849 Esther Howland had fully launched her valentine business and perfected her “assembly line” technique. Perhaps we should credit Esther Howland rather than Henry Ford with the development of mass production!” end quote. Perhaps indeed. 

 

In 1850 she had expanded her valentines designs to include even more elaborate and expensive cards using silk, satin, and lace and even posted ads in a local newspaper. Terrell reports quote “A simple Howland card sold for five cents, but cards with ribbon trimmings, pages of artistic illustrations, hidden doors, and gilded lace may have sold for as much as one dollar – a considerable sum of money at the time. Howland’s orders doubled, and her work force increased. She created Christmas and New Year’s cards, birthday cards, booklets and May baskets. Cards were sent all over the country, and sales eventually grew to $100,000 annually.” end quote. So, I crunched the numbers on that using an inflation calculator. 5 cents, her cheapest card is about $1.97 today. $1in 1850, her most expensive cards, that comes in at just under $40 today. So a $40 card, that’s, you’re not messing around. But, drumroll please, $100,000 annually, I did 1870, I gave her 20 years to get to that point which I think is generous, is equivalent to 2.3 billion dollars a year today. Girl was killing it. That is actually mind blowing. I cannot imagine what her father and brothers must have thought. S.A. Howland and Sons? More like Esther Howland and friends and occasionally father and brothers. 

 

So, she didn’t invent Valentines cards in the US, they were available they just weren’t super popular. But she was the first to commercially distribute English style hand made valentines. She’s also credited with several valentine innovations of her own including “lift up” valentines where it was like built up off the paper and you looked through an opening to see an image. She also came up with the idea of people choosing their own message and actually published and sold a book with a 131 verses that people could cut out and glue over the message in their valentine to make it say what they wanted it to say. 

 

In the 1870s, she incorporated her third floor bedroom business as the New England Valentine Company and moved to a factory on Main Street where she continued making valentines until 1880 when she sold the company to care for her sick and dying father, cause you know Allen wasn’t about to do that. Only women have to give up their hopes and dreams to care for others. But Esther Howland has gone down in history as the “Mother of the American Valentine” thanks to a newspaper article that referred to her as such after her death in 1904. Terrell concludes her article quote “Howland’s enduring claim to fame lies not only in having produced the first elaborate, handcrafted valentines in the United States, but also in having popularized Valentine’s Day cards across the country. Today’s multi-billion dollar greeting card industry is heavily indebted to the creativity, work ethic, and business acumen of Esther Howland.” end quote. Get. It. Girl. 

 

I feel inclined to shout out a friend of mine who runs her very own stationary and greeting card business called Something Peaceful. Her birthday was last week too. Happy birthday and Happy Valentines Day Manda! Y’all check out her stuff at somethingpeaceful.com, I’ll link it in the description. She’s a modern day Esther Howland and an inspiration. 

 

Today, according to Hallmark, around 145 million Valentine’s Day cards are sent every year making it the second largest card holiday just under Christmas. But I don’t think that number includes all those little paper cardboard valentines with cartoon characters and whatnot on them that kids exchange at school. And considering there are tens of millions of elementary school age children in the US all giving out 20 plus valentines each year. I think it probably is the biggest card holiday there is. But, you know, kids don’t count, so whatever. That was sarcasm, y’all know my stance on that. 

 

So Valentine’s Day, yet another holiday that a lot of people wholeheartedly celebrate each year and yet have no idea what it means or where it came from. And I mean, this one is so murky that you can Google it all day long and you will quickly find that no one really knows where it came from, which St. Valentine it was even meant to honor, or what the heck he even did. But oh well, it’s fun and happy and it’s about love and spreading joy so I’ll allow it. 

 

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Information used in this episode was sourced from History.com, NPR, Time Magazine, the British Library, the Library of Congress, and Encyclopedia Britannica. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.