On February 14th we use Chocolates and Flowers to Celebrate the Beheading of St. Valentine… that seems a bit odd…

On February 14th we use chocolates and flowers to celebrate the beheading of St. Valentine… that seems a bit odd…

The Catholic church has, over 2000 years, made every day of the year the feast day of one saint or another. It is fascinating to think about which saints days have bubbled up and are a core part of the public conscience. The three most popular saints whose days are still widely celebrated are St. Nicholas (whose day, December 6, and reputation as a gift giver has in many places been rolled into Christmas), St. Patrick, as a reason to celebrate Irish pride, and St. Valentine.

(One could add that in celebrating Halloween, we celebrate the idea of the impeding All Saints Day, and my own namesake’s day, Saint Stephen (December 26th) did make it into a popular Christmas carol.)

A saint’s day celebrates the birth of that saint into heaven, achieving full sainthood…or more bluntly, the day that saint died.

St. Valentine is the patron saint of love and happy marriages, and his day has come to symbolize a day for love…which is odd when you think that what the day actually commemorates is the beheading and martyring of the man.

St. Valentine is one of the very early church saints/martyrs and lived in the 3rd century AD. Very little is officially known about Valentine and his story has some variations, but in every story there are common elements. Valentine was a man of god, in some stories a priest, in others a Bishop. All versions agree he was from central Italy, possibly from Rome itself.    

He did perform miracles, but he is more famous for helping bring together and marry Christian couples. Any overt demonstrations of faith at this time were punishable by death. By marrying couples in Christian ceremonies, Valentine was essentially committing treason against the Roman state. Knowing this did nothing to stop him from performing these ceremonies. Valentine was eventually caught, tortured and executed by beheading on February 14th.

It is said that in the very last letter he wrote, he signed it, “From Your Valentine.” It became understood that to be a “Valentine” was to be a defender of love. While this was first understood as “holy love,” over time, unsurprisingly given his story, he came to represent secular romantic love.

There is enough evidence to say there was a Christian Italian man named Valentine, who was martyred for his faith, and was likely arrested because he was performing Christian marriage ceremonies which broke the law of the Roman state. Adding more evidence for a real Valentine is that there are documents that mention him and shrines built to his memory less than a century after his death.

In the late middle ages in Europe, people began to notice that birds seemed to begin to pair off in mid-February, and February 14th was the feast of Saint Valentine who brought people together and was the patron saint of love. This propelled the popularity of Valentine’s Day in the secular imagination and began transforming what was a saint’s feast day into the holiday about romantic love that we celebrate today.

Happy Valentine’s Day!