History of Valentine's Day

Today’s modern Valentine’s day is a popular holiday that can trace its origins all the way back to Ancient Rome. Although there are several different legends regarding the holidays beginning the purpose of the holiday remains undisputed. The general consensus among historians is that our modern holiday of St. Valentine can trace its origins back to the Roman feast of Lupercalia. More than two thousand years ago the people of ancient Rome celebrated a feast on the 14^th of February every year in honor of the Roman goddess Juno. Juno was the Queen of Roman Gods and Goddesses and she was regarded as the Goddess of women and marriage. Coupled with the observance of Juno’s holiday the following day brought an additional festival. This holiday was known as the “Feast of Lupercalia”. The “Feast of Lupercallia” was celebrated in honor of the God’s Lupercus and Faunus, Lupercus was the Roman name for the Greek god Pan, the God of Nature and Faunus was his female counterpart. The date of the festival coincided with the anniversary of the founding of the temple of Lupercus. A tradition of the Feast of Lupercalia was to bring together young boys and girls, who were normally segregated in society. The night before the festival the names of the girls were written on a piece of paper and placed in a jar. The following day the boys would individually drew a slip of paper from the jar bearing a girls name; the chosen pair would then spend the entire festival together. Some stories relate that successful pairings would last until next years Feast. More common than not, the pairing would allow the couple to fall in love and later marry. This tradition lasted for centuries until it was deemed peagen by Christians due to the negative stigma attached to pairings by luck.

Although the Roman tradition of pairing gave Valentines Day its general theme, efforts of St. Valentine produced its name and modern celebration. According to legend, the Roman Empire during the 3^rd century was engaged in several bloody military campaigns which were severely unpopular. As it became increasingly difficult to recruit soldiers, the reigning emperor Claudius II determined men did not choose to join because they would be forced to leave their wives and families. In order to combat this, Claudius decided to prohibit all marriages and engagements. A romantic priest Saint Valentine decided to go against the emperor’s order and marry those couples wishing to do so. When the priest’s actions were discovered he was severely beaten and then executed on February 14, 270 AD.

The modern tradition of giving valentines cards to loved one's was first introduced in the United States by Esther Howland during the 19th century.

The difficulty in completing such a seemingly easy assignment can be attributed to the fact that the objective sought forces the historian to go against the very nature of historical research. In the evaluation of secondary sources I’ve always been tought to first identify the author, then attempt to answer a series of questions dealing regarding why he or she wrote the text, who the intended audience of the text is and then identify the unspoken assumptions or detectable biases. This assignment asked to disregard all of this and instead focus on writing a “history” without consideration to the validity and qualifications of the source. As opposed to traditional research from books and scholarly journals, internet research forces one to sift through what are seemingly reliable sources and determine if in fact they were placed on the web by a random person with access to the correct software. It became immediately evident from the onset of this assignment that internet research forces the historian to add additional questions when taking information from the web. One must look for credentials and determine whether the author is affiliated with a university or institution; the historian must also search for a bibliography and citations; find out when the site was last updated and lastly internet research really forces the historian to compare the information with other sources to determine its credibility. Overall what I learned from this assignment is that a normal "google" search may be able to provide the answer to almost any question posed but when it comes down 100% confidence in that answer only the proper techniques of great research can allow a definitive conclusion.