Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day: see Saint Valentine's Day.

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Valentine's Day

Lovers' holiday celebrated on February 14, the feast day of St. Valentine, one of two 3rd-century Roman martyrs of the same name. St. Valentine is considered the patron of lovers and especially of those unhappily in love. The feast day became a lovers' festival in the 14th century, probably as an extension of pagan love festivals and fertility rites celebrated in mid-February. Today it is marked by the exchange of romantic cards (valentines), flowers, and other gifts.

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Valentine's Day

February 14

St. Valentine is believed to have been a Roman priest who was martyred on this day around 270. How he became the patron saint of lovers remains a mystery, but one theory is that the Church used the day of St. Valentine's martyrdom in an attempt to Christianize the old Roman Lupercalia, a pagan festival held around the middle of February. Part of the ancient ceremony entailed putting girls' names in a box and letting the boys draw them out. Couples would thus be paired off until the following year. The Church substituted saints' names for girls' names, in the hope that the participant would model his life after the saint whose name he drew. But by the 16th century, it was once again girls' names that ended up in the box. Eventually the custom of sending anonymous cards or messages to those one admired became the accepted way of celebrating St. Valentine's Day .
Valentine's Day has been the occasion for such events as underwater weddings and "kiss-ins" and "hug-ins"—in 1999, about 3,000 couples in Belarus attempted to set a new world record for the largest kiss-in (previously held by 1,600 couples in Spain); in 2002 more than 1,000 students and teachers at a South African high school went for the world's biggest hug-in.

SOURCES:
AmerBkDays-2000, p. 139
BkDays-1864, vol. I, p. 255
BkFest-1937, p. 15
DaysCustFaith-1957, p. 54
DictFolkMyth-1984, p. 866
FestSaintDays-1915, p. 34
FolkAmerHol-1999, p. 76
FolkWrldHol-1999, p. 174
OxYear-1999, pp. 76, 77
SaintFestCh-1904, p. 103
(c)

Celebration day: Feb 14