When and why did Valentine's Day start?

Answer 1

Valentine's Day - the popular festival of love and romances traces its origin to ancient Roman festival and has not been created by card companies as some people believe it to be. There are various legends associated with the festival along with the belief that birds began to mate from this day.

Valentines Day is a day to express your love and to celebrate the spirit of love.
1989

Answer 2

No one is quite sure who this 'St. Valentine' is as the early Roman Church list three potential martyrs while another source lists eight who had their feast day on February 14th.

In England during Geoffrey Chaucer's time of the 1300s, besides the religious association of this day, they also believed that birds began to mate on Valentine's Day (his poem, 'Parliament of Foules'). Shakespeare and some others mention this day as well.

However, there is one thing that was specific to February 13 through 15 on the Roman Calendar - the pagan festival of Lupercalia as Robert Meyers stated in his book, 'The Complete Book of American Holidays, pp. 50-51.'

The Roman Lupercalia was a feast celebrated in February in honor of the pastoral god, 'Lupercus,' a Roman version of the Greek god 'Pan.' The original festival was founded in the ancient legion of Romulus and Remus - traditionally the founders of Rome reared by a she-wolf (Latin: lupa) in a cave at the base of the Roman Palatine Hill - known as the Lupercal. Young men dressed in the skins of sacrificed goats would run through the Lupercal with strips of the goat hides called 'Februa' in Latin meaning cleansing or purification. Any woman slapped by theses were assured fertility and ease in childbirth.

The festival was called the 'Februatio' which lead to the modern month of February today. Over the years, newer customs were attached to this festival like drawing out valentines in honor of the goddess Juno (Meyers, p. 50).

Though tradition says Pope Gelasius eradicated the Lupercalia from Christian observance, the intermingling of paganism with Christianity practices by Church leaders, the Lupercalia would soon emerge into the observance of St. Valentine's Day (Myers, pp 50-51).

The custom of sending cards began in the 1700s and became commercialized in the 1800s. A USA periodical in 1863 claimed the Valentine's Day was so popular, is was only 2nd to Christmas.

Answer 3

Valentine's Day first started in 496 A.D. by Pope Gelasius. It was first started to honor the martyrs named Saint Valentine. It was removed as a Christian holiday in 1969.

Answer 4

at the end of the Vietnam War. The soldiers organised a day just so that they could spend time with their loved ones.