We all know what today is, right? Well, if you are married, you had better know. This is Valentine’s Day. It’s okay if you forgot President’s Day, Columbus Day, or Cinco de Mayo but you had better not forget your spouse’s birthday, wedding anniversary, and Valentine’s Day.
The origins of this day are a bit difficult to sort through. “Some historians believe it has roots in the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia. Held yearly on February 15, Lupercalia celebrated the coming of spring and fertility. It involved animal sacrifice, lots of drunken revelry, and possibly a ritual in which men and women were paired off by choosing names from a jar.
“As Christianity spread, pagan rituals fell out of favor. At the end of the 5th century AD, Pope Gelasius I outlawed the celebration. He’s sometimes credited with implementing St. Valentine’s Day, a holy feast day, to replace it.
“The name “Valentine’s Day” came from a Roman priest, St. Valentinus, who was martyred on February 14 in the 3rd century AD. [Allegedly, he was] executed because he secretly performed weddings for soldiers, who were forbidden to marry according to an edict from Claudius II.”1
By the 5th c., Lupercalia was outlawed and St. Valentine’s Day was celebrated to remember a martyr. But how did we get from that to where we are today, a celebration of love and romance. We can thank English literature for that one.
“The English poet Geoffrey Chaucer is credited with connecting St. Valentine’s Day to the idea of romance. Chaucer lived in the Middle Ages, the era of courtly love, when broad, romantic statements of devotion—poems, songs, paintings—celebrated partnership. In his circa 1382 poem “The Parliament of Fowls,” possibly written to commemorate the engagement of King Richard II, he envisions birds gathering on St. Valentine’s Day to choose their mates…From then on, Valentine’s Day was seen as a day of romantic love. So we can thank poetry—the ultimate romantic art form—for our modern-day idea of the holiday.”2
Some well-meaning Christians dismiss the idea of celebrating Valentine’s Day because of its pagan origins. And that is totally their right according to Romans 14:5-7. However, there is nothing in our celebration of Valentine’s Day that even resembles Lupercalia, we don’t celebrate a priest named St. Valentine, and if we want to carry logic all the way through, just about everything that we do in a Gregorian world using a Gregorian calendar has pagan or mythological connections if you trace it back far enough.
The name February is from an arcane pagan cleansing ritual3 and Saturday (today’s day of the week) comes from the Roman god, Saturn.4 Do we ever think about any of that? Of course not because it’s a part of the past that has been forgotten and has no connection to its origin. Same is true with Valentine’s Day.
If you want to have a gripe about Valentine’s Day, you could at least make it practical and complain that last year, $27.5 billion was spent on the day with 250 million roses sold, $6.5 billion on jewelry, 58 million pounds of chocolate, and 145 million Valentine’s Day cards. Men spend twice as much as women for Valentine’s Day.5 You could complain about this – but I wouldn’t suggest it!!
Now, let’s get back to what we celebrate for Valentine’s Day and why. Obviously, we celebrate love, specifically romantic love. This is a wonderful thing to celebrate provided that love is driven by moral, Biblical 
principles. And demonstrating that love is a righteous thing to do. 1 John 3:18 says, “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.” It’s only natural to want to show our love in tangible ways.
All love doesn’t have to be romantic love. In fact, most of the love we show isn’t going to be of the romantic sort. 1 John 4:7-8 says, “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. (8) He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” Valentine’s Day is a great reminder for us to show love and to do acts of kindness and love for others.
“And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you.” (1 Thessalonians 3:12)
1https://www.realsimple.com/holidays-entertaining/holidays/valentines-day/history-of-valentines-day
2Ibid.
3https://sjquillen.medium.com/why-the-calendar-is-still-pagan-a705f6f2b8f9
4https://www.etymonline.com/word/Saturday
5https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/valentines-day-shopping-statistics/
Images are taken from https://pixabay.com/, https://www.pexels.com/, or https://unsplash.com/images or created in Windows Copilot. According to the websites, they are Royalty Free and free to be used for our purposes.
