A STORY OF THE VALENTINES DAY
hello!! steemitians, i would like to first and foremost wish you all a happy valentines day celebration today, i would like to share the story of the valentine which i hope will inspire you and also give you the real meaning of valentines day.
February 14th, the holiday of Love! Every February,
across the country, candy, flowers, and gifts are exchanged
between loved ones, all in the name of St.Valentine.
Who is this mysterious saint and why do
we celebrate this holiday? The history of Valentine's
Day –and its patron saint—is shrouded in mystery.
St. Valentine's Day, as we know it today, contains
vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition.
The Catholic Church recognizes at least three
different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of
whom were martyred. Here are a few possibilities of
the source of this wonderful day.
Most scholars believe that the St. Valentine of the
holiday was a priest who served during the third century
in Rome. During this time around 270 A.D.,
Emperor Claudius II prohibited marriages for young
men, claiming that bachelors made better soldiers.
Valentine continued to secretly perform marriage
ceremonies but was eventually apprehended by the
Romans and ordered by Claudius to be put to death.
This St. Valentine could be posthumously recognized
for his commitment to the formal bonds of love.
Another legend has it that Valentine, imprisoned
by Claudius, fell in love with the daughter of his jailer
who visited him during confinement. Before he was
executed, he allegedly sent her a letter signed "from
your Valentine" an expression that is still used today.
This may have been the first Valentine’s Day.
And another plausible story surrounding St Valentine is one not focused on Eros(passionate love)
but on agape (Christian love): he was martyred for
refusing to renounce his religion. Thus the love of
Valentine's Day may have originally been a devotion
to one's god, rather than one's human partner.
It could be that we celebrate Valentines Day on
the 14th because this is the day that a St. Valentine
died. However, some believe that the celebration of
Valentine’s Day was an attempt by the Church to
civilize the celebration of the pagan Lupercalia festival.
The Festival was held on the 15th of February.
Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to
Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as
to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus. Pope
Gelasius declared February 14th St. Valentine's Day
around 498 A.D., and the Lupercalia festival was
outlawed.
The oldest known written valentine note still in
existence is a poem written by Charles, Duke of
Orleans to his wife while he was imprisoned in the
Tower of London. The greeting, written in 1415,
is part of the manuscript collection of the British
Library in London. And this tradition continues
strongly today: According to the Greeting Card
Association, an estimated one billion valentine cards
are sent each year, making Valentine's Day the second
largest card-sending holiday of the year. (An
estimated 2.6 billion cards are sent for Christmas.)
The first commercial Valentine's Day greeting cards
produced in the U.S. were created in the 1840s by
Esther A. Howland. Howland, known as the Mother