It’s cold in the Mid-Atlantic right now. It still gets dark early. And there’s plenty of snow. Face it—February is a pretty dreary month. The only bright spot is Valentine’s Day…aka St. Valentine’s Day. When I was young, we would make little paper Valentines to give to everyone in our class. As adults we come up with lovely cards, candies, flowers—whatever we decide to give to those we love. But of course the historian in me is curious how the holiday came about.

Going back to Roman times, they had a festival called Lupercalia in mid-February. The Romans dedicated it to Faunus, the god of agriculture, in the hope that spring and the planting season would come early. By 200 C.E., there seems to have been several Christians named Valentine. One legend says that before being martyred, a priest who had healed the blindness of one of his jailer’s daughters wrote her a letter, and signed it “from your Valentine.” Another story suggests that it was St. Valentine of Terni. A third theory says that St. Valentine married a number of couples in defiance of Emperor Claudius II Gothicus who demanded that all single men join his army. Which of these men was the real St. Valentine is lost in the mists of time, but it does appear that he was, in fact, martyred around the year 270.

By the end of the 5th century, Pope Gelasius I ended the Lupercalia festival. However, the Church decided that it would be appropriate to celebrate the feast of the martyred St. Valentine on February 14. Over the centuries, Valentine’s feast day morfed from a day in the liturgical calendar into one of love and romance. The first time we know of romance equating with St. Valentine is in the 1380s and Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem “Parliament of Foules,” in which he says “For this was on seynt Valentynys day, Whan euety Byrd cimyth there to she’s his make.”

The oldest known St. Valentine’s Day card was made by Charles, Duke of Orleans, while imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1415 after he was captured at the Battle of Agincourt. By the 15th century people would often write small romantic notes to loved-ones, and by the 17th century there were a few printed cards, though that was quite rare until the mid-1800s. Today there is a plethora of cards—from the most romantic to hilarious, and from the most modest to extravagant. The Greeting Card Association keeps track of all cards each year, and in 2019 there were 145 million Valentine cards sold. Personally, I’ve keep all of the cards my kids have given my over the years, and those hand-made, hand-written cards are far and away the best.