VALENTINE'S DAY

Different authorities believe Valentine's Day began in various ways.  Some trace it to an ancient Roman festival called Lupercalia.  Other experts connect the event with one or more saints of the early Christian church.  Still others link it with an old English belief that birds choose their mates on February 14.  Valentine's Day probably comes from a combination of all three of those sources -- plus the belief that spring is a time for lovers.

The ancient Romans held the festival of Lupercalia on February 15 to ensure protection from wolves.  During this celebration, young men struck people with strips of animal hide.  Women took the blows because they thought that the whipping made them more fertile.

After the Romans conquered Britain in 43 AD, the British brrowed many Roman festivals.  Many writers link the festival of Lupercalia with Valentine's Day because of the similar date and the connection with fertility.

The early Christian church had at least two saints named Valentine.  The Roman history of martyrs lists two Saint Valentines as having been martyred on February 14 by being beheaded.  According to one story, the Roman Emperor Claudius II in the AD 200's forbade young men to marry.  The emperor thought single men made better soldiers.  A priest named Valentine disobeyed the emperor's order and secretly married young couples.

Another story says Valentine was an early Christian who made friends with many children.  The Romans imprisoned him because he refused to worship their gods.  The children missed Valentine and tossed loving notes between the bars of his cell window.  This tale may explain why people exchange messages on Valentine's Day.  According to still another story, Valentinue restored the sight of his jailer's blind daughter.

Many stories say Valentine was executed on February 14 about 269 AD.  In 496 AD Pope Gelasius named February 14 as St. Valentine's Day.

In Norman French, a language spoken in Normandy during the Middle Ages, the word galantine sounds like Valentine and means gallant or lover.  This resemblance may have caused people to think of St. Valentine as the special saint of lovers.

The earliest records of Valentine's Day in English tell that birds chose their mates on that day.  People used a different calendar before 1582 and February 14 came later in the spring than it does now.  Geoffrey Chaucer, an English poet of the 1300s wrote in the Parliament of Fowls, "For this was on St. Valentine's Day, / When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate."  Shakespeare also mentioned this belief in A Mid-summer Night's Dream.  A character in the play discovers two lovers in the woods and asks, "St. Valentine is past; / Begin these woodbirds but to couple now?"