The Shadow
Valentine’s Day arrives every Feb. 14 in a flood of red roses, heart-shaped boxes and restaurant specials. It is marketed as a simple celebration of love. In reality, the holiday rests on a complicated foundation of pagan rituals, Christian martyrs, medieval poetry and, in the last century, a corporate machine obsessed with making money. It also shares a date, but not a purpose with one of the most infamous mob killings in American history, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. That bloody incident has nothing to do with why we celebrate the day, even though its name and timing are often tangled
with the modern holiday.
Long before anyone signed a card “from your valentine,” mid-February was a season of ritual and fertility in ancient Rome. The festival of Lupercalia held Feb. 13–15, honored Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, and was tied to the myth of Romulus and Remus, the city’s legendary founders. Priests of an order called the Luperci gathered at a sacred cave where, according to legend, a she-wolf once nursed the twins. There, they sacrificed goats for fertility and a dog for purification. Afterward, they cut strips of goat hide, dipped them in blood and ran through the streets, striking women
with the bloody thongs. Women did not flee, they lined up, believing the ritual would make them more fertile in the coming year. Lupercalia also featured a kind of matchmaking lottery. Young women’s names were placed in an urn, and men drew them at random, being paired with that woman for the festival and sometimes longer, even leading to marriage.
As Christianity spread, Church leaders moved to curb the pagan excesses while recognizing that people were attached to the timing and themes. In the late 5th century, Pope Gelasius I replaced Lupercalia with a Christian feast day honoring St. Valentine, keeping mid-February on the calendar but changing the meaning. The Valentine behind Valentine’s Day is not one neatly documented figure. The Catholic Church recognizes several martyrs named Valentine, and their stories have blended across time. One of the most repeated legends focuses on a priest in 3rd century Rome during the rule of Emperor Claudius II. Claudius supposedly believed that single men made better soldiers than married men and banned young men from marrying. Valentine, the story goes, defied the order and performed Christian weddings in secret. When officials discovered what he was doing, he was imprisoned and later executed, with some accounts placing his beheading on Feb. 14 around the year 269AD. A related tradition names Valentine as the bishop of Terni, who also angered authorities and was put to death. In some versions, he befriended his jailer’s blind daughter, prayed for her and
restored her sight. On the night before his execution, he is said to have sent her a note signed, “from your Valentine,” a line that would echo centuries later in greeting cards.
Historians warn that much of this is legend, built on thin documentation. Still, by the early Middle Ages, Feb. 14 was recognized as the feast of St. Valentine, and the figure of a Christian who risked his life for love and faith became a powerful symbol in Christian Europe.
The link between Valentine’s Day and romance took shape in the Middle Ages, especially in England and France, where people believed that love birds began choosing their mates in the middle of February. English poet Geoffrey Chaucer is often credited with strengthening the connection. In his late 14th century poem “Parliament of Fowls,” Chaucer described a gathering of birds on St. Valentine’s Day to choose their mates, tying the saint’s feast directly to courtship. That image helped fix Feb. 14 as a natural date for declarations of love. By the 15th century, nobles and literate couples were exchanging verses and letters to mark the day. One of the earliest known Valentines is a poem written by Charles, Duke of Orléans, to his wife while he was held in the Tower of London after the Battle of Agincourt. Over time, similar gestures spread beyond the aristocracy to ordinary people. What began as a martyr’s feast had become a date for handwritten notes, poetry and small tokens of affection, the early blueprint for the Valentine we know today.
The modern transformation of Valentine’s Day, from quiet letters to big business, came with the Industrial Revolution. Advances in printing and cheaper postal services in the 18th and 19th centuries made it possible to produce and mail large numbers of decorative cards. By the early 20th century, companies such as Hallmark in the United States were manufacturing printed Valentines on an industrial scale. What had been a
personal expression became a retail product with standard messages and readymade artwork. That shift opened the door for other industries. Florists leaned on the red rose, long tied to love through myths of Aphrodite and Adonis. Candy makers filled shelves with heart-shaped boxes of chocolate. Jewelry stores and restaurants joined in, branding Feb. 14 as a moment for “proving” love through gifts, dinners and experiences. Valentine’s Day is now the second largest card sending holiday after Christmas, with hundreds of millions of cards exchanged each year. It is one of the biggest days of the year for florists and a major sales driver for candy companies, jewelers and the restaurant industry. In the United States, annual spending tied to the holiday regularly reaches into the tens of billions of dollars. The language of romance has become a script for marketing. The promise of love is wrapped around price points and product launches.
Against this backdrop of ritual and retail stands one of the grisliest crime scenes in American history, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Despite the shared date and name, the massacre has no historical significance to the holiday. On the morning of Feb. 14, 1929, seven men tied to George “Bugs” Moran’s North Side Gang were lined up against the wall of a garage on Chicago’s North Clark Street. They were cut down by gunmen armed with Thompson submachine guns. Some of the attackers wore police uniforms, adding to the confusion and horror. The slaughter was widely believed to have been ordered by rivals connected to Al Capone, though no one was ever convicted. The attack shocked the country and cemented Chicago’s reputation as a gangster city. Over time, news coverage, books and films embedded the phrase “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” in the culture. But the massacre took place centuries after people in Europe and America were already observing Valentine’s Day as a religious and romantic holiday.
Valentine’s Day today is a layered observance, a faint echo of pagan fertility rituals, a Christian martyr’s feast, a medieval courtship ritual and a modern retail event.
It is about faith and feeling, but also, undeniably, about profit. For some, that mix is uncomfortable. For others, it is simply the way culture and commerce evolve. Either way, the story of Valentine’s Day shows how a day once rooted in blood, sacrifice and secret vows has been repackaged into one of the world’s most dependable showcases for love and selling it.
