Saints, love, chocolate, and goatskins: How we got from Lupercalia to Valentine’s Day (2024)

TWH – Happy St. Valentine’s Day! A day of heartfelt wishes with your loved one or ones to celebrate your eternal joy in each other presence. Despite the common belief that this is a Christian celebration of one beheaded saint’s love, the holiday story is much older. It’s also not love that made it popular – it’s money. (Sorry. It’s always money).

As with every road, the story of Valentine’s Day leads to Rome. The history of the holiday’s date may be traced to the Roman commemoration of Lupercalia, a somewhat complicated festival to modern eyes. It’s a little dark, somewhat broody, a little bloody – and there’s no candy.

Lupercalia, one of the known feriae of the ancient Roman calendar, began on February 13 and ran through the 15^th (and possibly lasted the whole month up to the Ides of March.) The holiday was already known during Julius Caesar’s rise to power in the last days of the Roman Republic. William Shakespeare uses the festival in his play as the backdrop against which Caesar famously rejects the crown.

Lupercalia stands out as one of the longest-lasting Roman pagan festivals. Lupercalia’s origins may date back to the founding of Rome, traditionally placed around 753 B.C., or even earlier. Its enduring presence spanned approximately 1200 years, concluding by the end of the 5th century A.D. in the Western Roman Empire, though it persisted in the East for several more centuries. The prolonged existence of Lupercalia can be attributed to various factors, with its widespread appeal emerging as a paramount reason.

The Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher Cicero attests to Lupercalia. In a letter to his friend Atticus dated February, 45 B.C., Cicero briefly refers to the Lupercalia festival, describing the events that took place during the celebration. He mentions the festival’s rites and the custom of the Luperci (priests of Lupercus) running through the streets clad in goatskins, striking those they encountered, especially women, with thongs made from sacrificed animals. But Cicero’s comments on Lupercalia are relatively short and are primarily descriptive in nature, offering a glimpse into the rituals associated with the festival rather than expressing a strong opinion about it.

By all accounts, the main activities of Lupercalia involved the sacrifice of a goat and a dog by priests known as the Luperci at the Lupercal cave. After the sacrifices, the priests would use strips of the sacrificed animals’ skins to ritually whip women and crops in the belief that it would bring fertility and ward off evil spirits. Young men would often run through the streets of Rome naked or nearly naked, striking those they encountered with strips of animal skin. Some sources say only young men with beards were allowed to participate.

In 2007, the Lupercal cave was discovered near the ruins of Emperor Augustus’s palace in Rome. The cave is located at the southwest of the Colosseum at the foot of the Palatine Hill. According to legend, the Lupercal is the cave where Romulus and Remus were taken and suckled by a she-wolf.

Research on Lupercalia has suggested the festival holds three main themes, which form the heart of the ritual program: purification, fertility, and protection. This ritual program included the following practices:

• the invocation of the first creation of the community (the respective honoring of Remus and of Romulus, the founders by the Sodales (priests of Lupercus)
• the confrontation of primitive to civilized for the protection of the community (i.e. the naked Luperci in contrast with the onlookers from the contemporary city);
• the annual ritual purification of the community (the sacrifice and the running and the actions of the runners);
• the ritual fertilization of the community (the ritual of whipping)

So, how did this become St. Valentine’s Day? Well, it wasn’t a direct transition.

There are some suggestions that Pope Gelasius I brought an end to the lingering Lupercalia tradition in the fifth century C.E. by uniting it with the narratives of St. Valentine. “[The emerging feast day] retained some elements of a spirited celebration, but the Christians added a more modest touch to it,” says Noel Lenski, a religious studies professor at Yale. “Nevertheless, it continued to be a day associated with fertility and love.”

Historians are skeptical, and factual veracity is not exactly a virtue in saintly records. The record does not offer much to connect the origins of the St. Valentine holiday’s narrative.

Moreover, the true identity of St. Valentine is shrouded in uncertainty. Some accounts assert the existence of a singular individual named Valentine, while others suggest the possibility of up to four distinct figures. None of them were very romantic; all of them were beheaded.

But we do know that Geoffrey Chaucer, often regarded as the Father of English Literature, is credited with the earliest association of St. Valentine’s Day with romantic love. In his poem “Parliament of Fowls,” written in the late 14th century, Chaucer refers to St. Valentine’s Day as a day when birds choose their mates. In Middle English, he wrote:

“For this was on seynt Volantynys day

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Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.”

Or in modern English:

“For this was on Saint Valentine’s day,

When every bird comes there to choose his mate.”

Chaucer’s mention of St. Valentine’s Day in the context of birds choosing their mates is considered one of the earliest connections between the day and romantic love in English literature. This association likely contributed to the gradual development of Valentine’s Day as a celebration of love and affection, not the Roman holiday connection.

But it was the Victorians that gave us the full commercialization of the holiday. A 1784 poem by Gammer Gurton Garland opened the way for future profit:

The rose is red, the violet’s blue,
The honey’s sweet, and so are you.
Thou art 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.

By the 1840s, Esther A. Howland gained recognition as the “Mother of the Valentine” by mass-producing and selling Valentine’s cards in America. Her cards, adorned with lace, ribbons, and images, offered a more affordable alternative to imported cards. This triggered an increase in Valentine’s Day merchandising in both America and England, with Cadbury, the British confection company, introducing heart-shaped boxes of chocolates in the 1860s.

The iconic conversation candies, featuring lovey and flirty phrases, were devised in 1866 by Daniel Chase, the brother of Oliver Chase, founder of the New England Confectionery Company. These candies, which didn’t adopt their heart shape until around 1902, aimed to carve out a niche in the expanding Valentine’s Day market.

Not to be outdone, in 1873, Milton S. Hershey inaugurated his first candy shop in Philadelphia. His persistent exploration of confectionery, particularly chocolate and caramel, led to the establishment of the Hershey Chocolate Company (Hershey’s) in 1894. The company struck confectionery gold in 1907 with Hershey’s Kisses, a candy now inseparable from the celebration of love. Hallmark Cards, founded in 1907, entered the Valentine’s Day market by selling gift cards in 1910. However, the waning popularity of postcards prompted them to shift towards the creation of Valentine’s Day cards in 1913.

By the 1950s, every company from DeBeer diamonds to Coca-Cola was celebrating love.

Today, in the 21st century, Valentine’s Day has evolved into a major commercial extravaganza. The colossal business surrounding this day includes the sale of cards, gifts, dining experiences, entertainment, and jewelry complete with online shopping promotions. According to the National Retail Federation of America’s annual survey, the projected total spending on significant others for Valentine’s Day 2024 is expected to reach a record-setting $14.2 billion.

Whether you celebrate Lupercalia, St. Valentine’s Day, or your own reconstruction of the holiday, we hope you have a great time. We hope you don’t hit people with thongs of animal hide, at least not without enthusiastic consent.

We also hope you don’t run around your town in a goat-skinned loin cloth. Though if you do, send pictures: Pagan Community Notes is tomorrow, you know.

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