Saturday, 14th February – Saint Valentine’s Day

Florists and greeting card makers both just love Valentine’s Day, 14th February. Stores decorate with cardboard cupids, hearts, even roses. Real roses command a price worthy of a prince’s ransom – well, perhaps a banker’s or automobile executive’s at least. Potted live orchid plants are offered for sale at more moderate prices.

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What on Earth could cause such an outpouring of loving feelings? What could a saint from early in the Christian era have to do with mass merchandizing? Precious little, if the truth be told. As with a surprising amount of modern celebrations, it dates back to a very ancient Roman custom. The goddess Juno Februarto was honoured every 15th February when boys would draw names of girls from an urn, who then became their girlfriends for the year. Needless to say, this was very popular. Later, Christians sought to substitute a ceremony of their own to replace such a naughty pagan practice. Unfortunately at this point there seems to have been a bit of a mix up. Not one but two saints are said to be named Valentine, one a priest the other a bishop. Both were beheaded on 14th February 269 A.D. and buried in separate graves on Rome’s Via Flaminia. Or so it was claimed. In merry medieval England, it was believed birds became paired on 14th February. So a revival of the Roman custom of drawing names by young men and women developed in England and Scotland, along with an exchange of gifts on that day. This grew ever more popular when printing allowed greeting cards to be invented and professional gardeners developed modern roses and other flowers. Various religious groups, including Christians, have protested against what they deem as unholy activities. How successful these protests have been can be seen by looking at this month’s advertising flyers. The American poet Ogden Nash, observing that 14th February was given over to commerce, summed it up: We’d never annex/The female sex/Without Saint Valentine.