Valentines Day: A Brief History-ish (No Really)

Originally posted on 02/14/07

Most people in today's society think of Valentine's Day as just an excuse for card and candy companies to make money and to generally make single people feel bad. This could not be farther from the truth. To find the origins of this holiday, we must set the way-back machine to the third century Rome and the martyred St. Valentinus or St Valentine.

Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men -- his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

Legend says that St Valentine sent the first Valentine while imprisoned. This was an amazing coincidence that he was able to not only find something that bared his name while in prison but was able to accurately figure out what should be done with it. While in prison he fell in love with his jailer's daughter who would visit him frequently. Sadly, all this took place before the invention of the conjugal visit.

Before his death he managed to write and send her a letter in the Valentine through the assistance of his friend and fellow prisoner St Hallmark who for unknown reasons doodled a cartoon heart holding flowers in its gloved hand and big smile across the letter's face. The letter was signed "from your Valentine".

For many years this act was celebrated every February by lovers who would unjustly imprison and killing each other. This practice continued up until the beginnings of the Spanish Inquisition. Upon its creation, the Inquisition put an immediate stop to this practice as it leaders felt that they didn't need the competition. Valentines Day, as a holiday, as a result, remained uncelebrated for many many years.

This remained the state of affairs until the winter of 1929 when a man named Al Capone revived the holiday by ordering the gunning down seven members of George 'bugs' Moran's gang against the rear inside wall of the garage of the S-M-C Cartage Company in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago's North Side. The five gunmen, all dressed as police officers for that extra added sense of whimsy (a practice used by strippers to this very day), all used machine guns filled with little chalky candy hearts. In this way they honored the long forgotten tradition of killing loved ones and added the new wrinkle of also bestowing candy on them.

Thus was reborn this noble holiday. Things continued on for a time with imprisoning and bludgeoning with candy of young lovers. The old holiday had made a full comeback. In March of 1940, the practice came to a final close in the wake of a particularly bloody Valentines Day when someone in the American congress pointed out that necrophilia was, in fact, illegal. This was met with howls of protest from the chain and chocolate covered weapon industry but cheers from the greeting card industry which immediately put its full support behind a ban on unlawful imprisonment and murder of loved ones.

The public was, as usual, slow to accept change and the death rate during February continued on at its staggering level. It was only through a marketing blitz by the Greeting card companies, in an attempt to convince the public that a nice card could be just as effective as a chocolate covered ax to the skull at expressing romantic love that the idea of a Valentines Day not resulting in fatalities gained popularity. With time, and a wider degree of acceptance the old holiday evolved into the romantic and, usually, non-fatal expression of love that we know and enjoy today

(Thanks to wikipedia and various other sites for background)