Valentine’s Day is celebrated each year on February 14th.

The feast
day of the Catholic Saint Valentine, February 14th has become known as a day to
celebrate love. On Valentine’s Day, people give cards and gifts to romantic partners and
others they love. Cards exchanged on Valentine’s Day have come to be known simply as
“valentines”. It is estimated that close to one billion valentines are sent worldwide each
year!
In the Middle Ages, a tradition of “courtly love” inspired Valentine’s Day. The idea
behind courtly love was for the man to “court” his romantic interest. In other words, he
did his best to be worthy of her love. Some of the ways for a man to court a woman
would include giving her gifts and trying his best to act like a gentleman around her.
There were many men named Valentine in the Middle Ages and a number of
Saint Valentines as well. The Saint Valentine honored on Valentine’s Day may be more
of a legend than an actual person. However, there were two men named Valentine who
are saints. A feast day honoring
them is on February 14th in the
Catholic calendar. One Saint
Valentine was bishop in Rome and
the other was a bishop in the Italian
city of Terni. Among the legends
about Saint Valentine is the story
that while he was imprisoned for
being a Christian, people would
leave notes for him that they folded
up and hid in cracks in the rocks
around his jail cell. It was said that
Valentine would find these notes and
offer prayers for the people who had
left them. Another legend is that
Valentine himself sent the first
“valentine” while he was in jail. It
was supposedly signed “from your Valentine” and sent to a young girl who had become
his friend while he was in prison.
A possible explanation for the choice of February for the celebration of
Valentine’s Day is that it was chosen by the church to replace the ancient Roman festival
of “Lupercalia”. Lupercalia was held each February to honor the god Lupercus. One of
the activities of the festival was to put young women’s’ names in a box. Each young man
would draw a name from the box, and the woman whose name he picked would become
his “lady love”. In Christian times, the tradition changed to putting the names of saints
and martyrs into a box instead. The name drawn would become one’s “valentine”, and
he was expected to live as that saint had lived. In the year 496, Pope Gelacius I
abolished Lupercalia and declared February 14th Saint Valentine’s Day.
More than a thousand years later, Valentines Day had become
popular throughout Europe, where gift giving and the exchange of hand-made valentines
on February 14th was a popular tradition in the 1500s. In America, it was later, in the
1700s, that people began the tradition of exchanging paper “valentines” on Valentine’s
Day. In the 1840’s, the first mass-produced valentines were created and sold by a
woman named Esther A. Howland. Known as the “Mother of Valentine’s Day,” Ms.
Howland sold greetings that she created from pictures, lace and ribbon. Her valentines
were so popular that she hired family and friends to help her, and she soon had a
successful business. Another American who helped to popularize valentines was a man
name George C. Whitney. He started by running a stationery store and by 1888, his
company was one of the largest publishers of valentines in the U.S., with offices in New
York, Boston and Chicago. The tradition of sending valentines has continued to grow to
this day. In fact, now only Christmas cards are sent in greater numbers than
 Valentine’s Day Questions
1. February 14th is

a. Saint Valentine’s feast day.

b. Valentine’s Day.
c. traditionally a day to celebrate love.
d. All of the above

2. What do we call cards sent for Valentine’s Day?

3. Saint Valentine

a. never existed.
b. existed, but what we know of him is more legend than fact.
c. was the founder of Valentine’s Day.
d. None of the above

4. In the Middle Ages, to “court” a woman meant

a. to try to win her love.

b. to make her a member of the royal family.
c. to marry her.
d. to take her out on a date.

6. February may have been chosen for Valentine’s Day

a. because it was Saint Valentine’s birthday.

b. to replace a Roman festival.
c. because it was cold and people had more time to spend indoors.
d. because it is the shortest month of the year.

7. What is Lupercalia?

a. an ancient Roman festival.

b. an ancient festival of the Catholic church.
c. a name to describe knights and noblemen.
d. None of the above

8. During Lupercalia, the names of young women were placed in a box. What happened
with these names?

a. The people prayed for them to find good husbands.

b. Each young man drew the name of a woman who would be his lady love.
c. Each young man drew the name of a woman who would become his wife.
d. The townspeople made valentines for the young woman.

9. Name the two people who helped popularized Valentine’s Day in America.