February
has come to be known for the Holiday of Valentine's Day. I'd heard for
many years that this was not a real holiday, that it was a made-up day
by the greeting card people. I wanted to know if that was true, so I did
a little research and found that there is indeed more meaning to the
holiday than our cynical ideas may have conjured up.
Valentine's Day History
Many
sources state that the actual Christian Feast of Saint Valentine is
most likely celebrated for a few different Saints of the same name. One
in particular was said to have been imprisoned for performing marriages
to soldiers who had been forbidden to marry, as marriage was considered a
distraction from their duties.
There
is also much conversation that Valentine's Day, like many other
Christian holidays, may have more pagan origins. Lupercalia was a Roman
holiday, celebrated on the Ides of February the 15th, as a fertility
festival in the name of Faunus, a Roman god. Further fueling this
energy, it was believed during the middle ages that February 14th was
the beginning of the mating season for birds.
The
first Valentine is said to have been sent in the early 1400's, with the
credit of being the first to link this day to Romance going to Geoffrey
Chaucer in his poem "The Parliament of Fowls."
And
so it appears that Valentine's Day has been linked to romance long
before Hallmark arrived on the scene. And, you do not have to be
romantically involved with someone to appreciate the beauty of this
holiday - sending a Valentine to anyone who has touched your heart will
certainly warm your own.
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