From martyred priests to medieval poets, the origins of St Valentine’s Day are as tangled as they are romantic. We trace the historical threads of Christianity’s most commercial saint.

The story of St Valentine begins not with one man, but with at least three—possibly more. This multiplicity of Valentines, all venerated by the early Church, all meeting violent ends, creates a historical puzzle that has confounded scholars for centuries. What we know with certainty is frustratingly sparse; what we think we know is often the invention of much later storytellers, eager to fill the gaps left by history with something more satisfying than silence.

It is a peculiarly modern predicament to seek historical precision in matters of ancient devotion. The early Christians who venerated Valentine cared little for biographical accuracy as we understand it. They sought models of faith, examples of courage in the face of persecution, names to invoke for protection and intercession. That Valentine might have been several people, or that his story might have accrued embellishments over time, would not have troubled them. Yet for us, separated by nearly two thousand years and armed with the tools of historical criticism, these ambiguities present a fascinating challenge. How did a figure about whom we know almost nothing become the patron saint of one of the world’s most widely celebrated secular holidays?

The Valentines of Rome

The earliest mentions of St Valentine appear in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, a fifth-century compilation of martyrs and saints that survives in various manuscripts of varying reliability. Here we find two distinct Valentines commemorated on 14 February: one described as a priest of Rome, the other as the Bishop of Interamna, modern-day Terni, a town some sixty miles north of the capital along the Via Flaminia. Both men, according to tradition, were executed during the reign of Emperor Claudius II, known as Claudius Gothicus, around 269 CE—a period when Christianity still operated in the shadows of Roman persecution, its adherents subject to sporadic but brutal suppression.

The Roman Valentine, so the story goes, was a physician and priest who defied imperial edict by performing Christian marriages for young lovers. The emperor, believing that unmarried men made better soldiers—unencumbered by family obligations, more willing to face death—had banned marriage for young men in his army. Valentine continued to marry couples in secret, performing clandestine ceremonies by candlelight in hidden chambers, speaking the sacred words that bound man and woman in the eyes of God if not of Rome. When his activities were discovered, he was arrested, interrogated, and commanded to renounce his faith. He refused. He was beaten with clubs, stoned, and finally beheaded on the Via Flaminia. His body was later buried at the site by faithful followers who risked their own lives to honour him, and a basilica was eventually erected in his honour, becoming a place of pilgrimage for centuries.

The Bishop of Terni’s story runs parallel in many ways. He too was martyred under Claudius, though the specific circumstances of his death remain vague in the historical record. According to some accounts, he was summoned to Rome to perform a miracle—the healing of a young man afflicted with a terrible wasting disease. When Valentine succeeded through prayer, the young man’s family converted to Christianity. This public display of Christian power so alarmed the Roman authorities that Valentine was arrested. He was offered his freedom if he would worship the Roman gods; he refused and was executed. Some scholars have suggested that these two Valentines might actually be the same person—that the priest of Rome and the bishop of Terni were one man whose story became fragmented and duplicated through the telephone game of oral tradition and manuscript copying, each telling emphasizing different aspects of his ministry, each scribe adding details that seemed plausible or edifying.

A third Valentine appears in ancient martyrologies: Valentine of Africa, martyred with several companions whose names have been preserved—Proculus, Efebo, Apollonius, and others—though their stories have not. Of him we know almost nothing beyond a name and a date, yet his feast day too fell on 14 February, adding another layer to the confusion. Was this yet another historical figure, or had the name Valentine become so associated with martyrdom and sanctity that it was applied retrospectively to unnamed African martyrs, giving them an identity and connection to the more famous Roman saint?

The problem is compounded by the very commonness of the name. Valentinus, derived from the Latin word for “strong” or “healthy,” was widespread in the Roman Empire. Numerous Valentines appear in early Christian records: Valentine of Viterbo, Valentine of Raetia, Valentine of Passau. The calendar of saints bulges with Valentines, their stories blurring together in a fog of similar hagiographic tropes—miraculous healings, defiant speeches before pagan judges, brutal executions, posthumous miracles.

The Archaeology of Devotion

In 1836, workmen excavating near the Flaminian Gate in Rome, part of a broader archaeological programme stimulated by Romantic-era fascination with early Christianity, discovered an ancient catacomb previously unknown to modern scholars. The catacomb’s walls were decorated with the simple fish symbols and Chi-Rho monograms characteristic of early Christian burial sites. Inside, they found a tomb inscribed with the name “Valentine.” Near the skeletal remains lay a glass vial stained with what was assumed to be blood—a common feature of martyr burials, where the faithful would preserve evidence of their sacrifice, the physical remnant of their witness. The bones were declared to be those of St Valentine and were subsequently distributed as relics across Europe, following an ancient practice that had experienced a revival in the nineteenth century.

The Carmelite Church on Whitefriar Street in Dublin received a casket containing the remains, a gift from Pope Gregory XVI. These relics arrived with considerable ceremony in 1836, and the church quickly became a site of pilgrimage, particularly for young couples seeking blessing on their relationships. Today, the relics rest in a special shrine, the casket adorned with fresh flowers year-round, but especially on 14 February when the church fills with pilgrims. The church’s guardians maintain that these are indeed the bones of the Roman martyr, though they acknowledge the historical uncertainties surrounding his identity.

Similar claims are made by other churches. The Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome displays what it claims to be Valentine’s skull, crowned with flowers. The Church of Saint Praxedes, also in Rome, possesses what it describes as Valentine’s remains. Glasgow’s Blessed John Duns Scotus Church holds a relic. The Stephansdom in Vienna, the Church of Saint Anton in Madrid—the list goes on. If all these claims were true, Valentine must have possessed an anatomy that would astound medical science.

But the archaeological evidence, like the textual sources, raises as many questions as it answers. Roman catacombs contain hundreds, indeed thousands, of Christian burials, many unmarked or ambiguously inscribed. The Valentine discovered in 1836 might have been the martyred priest, or simply another Christian who happened to share that common Roman name. The practice of relic distribution in the nineteenth century, coinciding with a romantic revival of medieval piety and a renewed interest in the material remains of early Christianity, makes the chain of authenticity even more difficult to verify. Well-meaning ecclesiastics, eager to provide their congregations with tangible connections to the age of martyrs, were sometimes less than rigorous in their attribution of remains.

Moreover, the science of the era was not equipped to verify such claims. Carbon dating, DNA analysis, careful stratigraphic archaeology—none of these tools existed in 1836. The workmen who discovered the tomb had no training in archaeological method. Their interest was in treasure and curiosities, not in careful documentation of context. The inscription itself, “Valentine,” tells us little. Was it carved at the time of burial, or added later? Was this Valentine a martyr, or simply a Christian who happened to die in the third century? We cannot know.

Yet the power of these relics should not be dismissed simply because their authenticity cannot be proven. For the faithful, they represent a connection across time, a physical link to the age when Christianity was new and dangerous, when belief required courage that we, living in an age of religious freedom, can barely imagine. To touch the casket containing Valentine’s bones, or to pray before his skull, is to participate in a devotional tradition stretching back sixteen centuries. The historical Valentine may be lost to us, but these relics preserve something valuable nonetheless: the memory of sacrifice, the witness of faith.

The Golden Legend and Narrative Embellishment

It was Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea (The Golden Legend), compiled around 1260, that crystallized Valentine’s story for medieval Europe. This immensely popular hagiographic collection, copied and recopied throughout the Middle Ages, translated into every European vernacular, transformed sparse historical fragments into vivid narrative. More than a thousand manuscript copies survive, suggesting a readership vast by medieval standards. The invention of printing only amplified its reach; between 1470 and 1530, it went through dozens of editions, making it one of the most widely read books of the late medieval and early Renaissance periods, surpassed only by the Bible itself.

In Voragine’s telling, Valentine becomes a fully realized character: the kindly priest who befriends children and young lovers, who restores the sight of his jailor’s blind daughter through prayer, and who sends the first “valentine”—a farewell note signed “from your Valentine” before his execution. The narrative is structured according to medieval hagiographic conventions. First comes the saint’s life, emphasizing his virtues and good works. Then his confrontation with pagan authority, in which he demonstrates unwavering faith and eloquent defense of Christian truth. Then his torture and martyrdom, described in sufficient detail to inspire awe but not so graphically as to overwhelm. Finally, his posthumous miracles, proving that death has not diminished his power to intercede with God on behalf of the faithful.

These embellishments, beautiful as they are, appear nowhere in earlier sources. They represent the medieval impulse to flesh out the spare bones of martyrology with moral instruction and emotional resonance. The Golden Legend was not history as we understand it today, but rather sacred story—designed to inspire devotion and provide models of Christian virtue, not to document verifiable events. Voragine and his contemporaries operated under different epistemological assumptions. Truth, for them, was not primarily a matter of empirical accuracy but of spiritual significance. A story could be “true” because it conveyed essential truths about holiness, sacrifice, and divine power, even if its specific details were embellished or invented.

The letter to the jailor’s daughter is particularly suspect from a historical standpoint. No manuscript evidence supports its existence before the thirteenth century, more than nine hundred years after Valentine’s purported death. Yet this touching detail—the saint penning a final message of love before his martyrdom, transforming even his captivity into an opportunity for evangelism and human connection—became central to the modern mythology of Valentine’s Day. It gave the saint a human warmth, a personality beyond the formulaic courage of the martyr. He becomes someone we can imagine knowing, someone whose compassion extended even to the daughter of the man who held him prisoner.

Other medieval additions further enriched the narrative. Some versions describe Valentine cutting heart shapes from parchment and giving them to persecuted Christians to remind them of God’s love. Others tell of him secretly wearing an amethyst ring bearing Cupid’s image, by which Christian couples could recognize him. Still others recount how he restored the greenery of a garden that had withered in winter, prefiguring spring and resurrection. Each embellishment served a purpose, adding symbolic layers to the saint’s meaning. The hearts represented divine love; the ring suggested the sacrament of marriage; the garden signified the renewal of life after death.

The medieval imagination, untroubled by modern distinctions between fact and fiction, wove these elements together into a rich tapestry of meaning. Valentine became not just a historical figure but an archetype, a symbol of love’s triumph over tyranny, of spring’s victory over winter, of life’s conquest of death. His story was told and retold, illustrated in manuscripts and on church walls, performed in mystery plays and recited in sermons. Each telling added new details, new emphases, adapting the legend to local concerns and contemporary circumstances.

From Lupercalia to Courtly Love

The more vexing question is how a martyred priest became associated with romantic love at all. The early Church fathers provide no clue; their Valentines were admired for their faith and courage, not their matchmaking. Nothing in the martyrologies suggests any connection between Valentine and romantic affection. The transformation required the collision of several cultural forces across many centuries, a complex process that remains only partially understood despite extensive scholarly investigation.

Some historians have pointed to the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, celebrated from 13 to 15 February. This fertility rite, one of the most ancient and persistent of Roman religious observances, involved the sacrifice of goats and dogs—animals associated with fertility and purification—at the Lupercal cave on the Palatine Hill, the legendary site where the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus. The priests, young men called Luperci, would cut thongs from the sacrificed animals’ hides. Stripped naked or wearing only these blood-soaked hide strips, they would run around the boundaries of the old Palatine settlement, striking any women who came near. Far from fleeing, Roman women would deliberately place themselves in the runners’ path, for the ritual flagellation was believed to promote fertility and ease childbirth.

The festival also involved a lottery in which young men drew names of women who would be their companions for the duration of the festival, a pairing that might involve sexual activity. This lottery element has sometimes been seen as a precursor to Valentine’s Day traditions, though the connection remains speculative. Pope Gelasius I officially abolished Lupercalia in 496 CE, denouncing it as a pagan superstition incompatible with Christian faith. In a letter to the Roman senator Andromachus, Gelasius mocked the idea that running naked through the streets hitting women with goatskin thongs could have any beneficial effect, asking sarcastically whether those who believed in such things would like their wives and daughters to participate.

Some scholars have suggested that the Church deliberately repositioned Valentine’s feast day to Christianize the pagan celebration, offering a Christian alternative to the discredited fertility rite. The proximity of dates—Lupercalia ending on 15 February, Valentine’s Day celebrated on 14 February—seems suggestive. This would fit a pattern documented elsewhere: Christmas positioned near the winter solstice celebrations, Easter connected to spring fertility rites, All Saints’ Day replacing Samhain. The Church frequently co-opted pagan calendar markers, consecrating the rhythm of the year to Christian purposes.

But this theory, tidy as it sounds, lacks supporting evidence. Medieval sources show no awareness of any connection between Valentine and Lupercalia. The literate monks and clerics who preserved and transmitted Valentine’s story were educated men, well-versed in classical literature. Had they understood Valentine’s Day as a Christian replacement for Lupercalia, surely someone would have mentioned it. Yet no medieval text makes this connection. The association appears to be a modern construction, first proposed by eighteenth-century antiquarians fascinated by the persistence of pagan customs and eager to trace Christian practices back to pre-Christian origins. These scholars, influenced by Enlightenment skepticism about religion, tended to interpret Christian feast days as thinly disguised paganism, an interpretation that often revealed more about their own assumptions than about historical reality.

The actual shift toward romance seems to have occurred in the High Middle Ages, specifically in the literary culture of courtly love that flourished in fourteenth-century England and France. This was a highly sophisticated literary movement, centered in aristocratic courts, that elevated romantic love to unprecedented status. Troubadours and court poets composed elaborate verses celebrating love as an ennobling force, a spiritual discipline that refined and perfected the lover. The beloved, typically a married noblewoman of higher status than the poet, was idealized almost to the point of worship. The love was typically unconsummated—indeed, its unconsummated nature was essential to its virtue—and expressed through elaborate codes of behavior and symbolic gestures.

It was Geoffrey Chaucer, that most sophisticated of medieval poets, who first explicitly linked St Valentine’s Day with romantic love. In his 1382 poem Parlement of Foules (Parliament of Fowls), written to celebrate the first anniversary of the engagement between Richard II and Anne of Bohemia, Chaucer described how birds gather on “Seynt Valentynes day” to choose their mates:

“For this was on seynt Volantynys day Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.”

This was pure poetic invention, a brilliant piece of literary creativity. February 14th falls far too early for actual avian mating season in England, when birds would still be in the depths of winter survival mode. Some scholars have suggested Chaucer might have been referring to a different Valentine celebrated in May, but this seems unlikely given that the poem explicitly mentions the cold and the need to huddle for warmth. More probably, Chaucer simply needed a saint’s day in mid-February for his royal celebration, and Valentine’s name, with its echo of “valor” and “gallant,” seemed appropriately romantic.

But Chaucer’s vision captured the medieval imagination with remarkable speed. Within decades, other poets were composing Valentine’s verses, elaborating on Chaucer’s conceit. The French poet Oton de Grandson, Chaucer’s contemporary and possible influence, wrote several poems referencing Valentine’s Day and love. Charles, Duke of Orleans, imprisoned in the Tower of London for twenty-five years following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, wrote dozens of poems to his wife Bonne, including several valentines. His 1415 letter, beginning “Je suis desja d’amour tanné / Ma tres doulce Valentinée” (I am already sick of love, my very gentle Valentine), survives in the British Library as one of the oldest known valentines, a poignant reminder that romantic love flourished even in captivity.

The practice spread through the aristocratic courts of Europe. By the fifteenth century, Valentine’s Day had become an established occasion for romantic expression among the nobility. The Earl of Warwick’s household accounts for 1478 record payments for valentines. In 1477, Margery Brews wrote to John Paston, calling him “my right well-beloved Valentine” and expressing her hope that they might marry despite her father’s insufficient dowry offer. Her letter, preserved in the Paston family correspondence, is often cited as one of the earliest surviving valentine love letters in English.

The Circulation of Sentiment

The practice of exchanging valentines proliferated through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, particularly among the literate classes who had access to paper, writing materials, and the education necessary to compose appropriate verses. These early valentines were handwritten notes, often elaborate affairs incorporating verses copied from pattern books, original compositions, drawings, and complex paper constructions. The creation of a valentine could take days or even weeks, particularly if the sender wished to demonstrate skill in calligraphy, drawing, or paper-cutting.

Young men and women would draw names by lottery on Valentine’s Eve, creating pairings that might last through the season or, occasionally, lead to actual courtship and marriage. Samuel Pepys’s famous diary contains numerous references to Valentine’s Day customs in Restoration England. In his entry for 14 February 1667, he describes how his wife drew the name of a certain Mr. Pembleton, while Pepys himself drew their maid. The custom required Pepys to give his valentine (the maid) a gift—he records spending £1 on gloves—while also maintaining the playful fiction that this pairing had romantic significance. The practice had clear erotic overtones while remaining just within the bounds of social propriety, a sanctioned opportunity for flirtation and romantic speculation.

By the Georgian era, the valentine industry had begun to industrialize. Printers produced books of verse from which the tongue-tied could copy appropriate sentiments. “The Young Man’s Valentine Writer” (1784) and “The Lover’s Manual” (1789) were among dozens of such publications, offering verses suitable for various situations: declarations of new love, responses to unwanted attention, playful flirtation, serious proposals. These books sometimes included elaborate codes and symbolic systems—the language of flowers, the meaning of colors, the significance of various emblems—that allowed writers to embed multiple layers of meaning in their valentines.

The invention of the Penny Post in 1840 made sending valentines affordable and, crucially, anonymous—a postal veil behind which shy admirers could declare feelings they dared not express in person. The cost of sending a letter dropped from several shillings (paid by the recipient) to one penny (paid by the sender), and the new system guaranteed delivery within London in a matter of hours. The impact on valentine exchange was immediate and dramatic. In 1840, some 400,000 valentines were sent through the British postal system. By 1871, that number had exploded to 1.2 million. Post offices had to hire extra staff to handle the Valentine’s Day deluge, and mail carriers complained of the burden.

Victorian valentines became increasingly elaborate, transforming into miniature works of art. They incorporated lace—real or paper—ribbons, chromolithographs, embossed images, and mechanical elements. Manufacturers developed specialized techniques: “cobweb valentines” with intricate die-cut overlays creating web-like patterns; “puzzle purse valentines” with folded layers concealing messages; “pinprick valentines” with designs created by piercing paper with pins. Some featured movable parts, pop-up constructions, or hidden messages revealed through layers of paper manipulation. The most expensive valentines were housed in elaborate boxes, decorated with silk, satin, and real lace, and could cost several pounds—a significant sum when the average worker earned less than £50 per year.

The firm of Esther Howland in Worcester, Massachusetts, became the first major American valentine manufacturer in the 1840s, creating valentines that rivaled their British counterparts in elaboration. Howland employed a production line of young women, each specializing in a particular aspect of valentine creation—one cutting shapes, another gluing lace, another adding verses. Her valentines sold for anywhere from five cents to fifty dollars, with the most elaborate examples featuring multiple layers, three-dimensional elements, and semi-precious decorations.

But alongside these sweet tokens flourished a darker tradition: the vinegar valentine or comic valentine, often crudely illustrated and bearing insulting verses. These emerged in the 1840s alongside the sentimental valentines, representing the shadow side of romantic culture. Vinegar valentines mocked physical appearance, social pretensions, occupation, character flaws, or romantic presumption. A valentine sent to a woman considered too forward might feature an illustration of an unattractive woman chasing a fleeing man, with verses warning her to curb her bold behavior. One sent to a rejected suitor might depict a foolish man mooning over a woman who laughs at him, with text making clear his suit is hopeless and ridiculous.

Some vinegar valentines were genuinely vicious, attacking racial or ethnic identity, physical disability, or poverty. Others operated within the bounds of recognized social satire, gently mocking common types—the gossip, the dandy, the penny-pincher. The practice was sufficiently widespread that some sources estimate vinegar valentines outnumbered sentimental ones by the 1860s. The anonymity provided by the postal system enabled their cruelty; senders could insult without consequence, hiding behind the mail system’s protections.

The postman delivering valentines on 14 February might bring joy or devastation in equal measure. Some recipients, particularly young women, were reportedly so distressed by vinegar valentines that their families complained to authorities. Yet the practice persisted into the early twentieth century, only declining when changes in social mores made such overt cruelty less acceptable, and when manufacturers voluntarily ceased production in response to criticism.

Victorian Symbolism and the Language of Love

The Victorian era elevated valentine symbolism to extraordinary heights. Every element of a valentine carried meaning, creating a complex semiotic system that allowed senders to communicate precisely calibrated messages. The color of paper, the type of lace, the specific flowers illustrated, the ribbons’ arrangement—all these elements could be read by those educated in the system.

Red signified passionate love, pink suggested romantic but less consuming affection, yellow indicated friendship, white represented purity, purple denoted royalty and dignity. Roses declared love, but the color mattered: red roses proclaimed passionate desire, white roses indicated worthiness or purity, yellow roses suggested friendship, pink roses conveyed perfect happiness. Violets meant faithfulness, forget-me-nots warned against forgetting, pansies declared thoughts of the beloved. An elaborate valentine might incorporate dozens of floral symbols, creating a complex botanical message that required careful decoding.

Beyond flowers, other symbols proliferated. Hearts, of course, represented love, but their number and arrangement mattered. Two hearts intertwined suggested mutual love, three hearts indicated the sender, receiver, and Cupid, seven hearts referenced the seven deadly sins overcome by love. Keys symbolized the opening of hearts, cages suggested captured hearts, anchors represented steadfast devotion, knots indicated binding commitment.

The Victorians’ love of elaborate symbolism extended to valentine paper games and divinations. Young women would write potential suitors’ names on slips of paper, place them in water, and watch to see which would surface first—this man would be their valentine. Others would pin bay leaves to their pillows on Valentine’s Eve, believing this would cause them to dream of their future husband. Still others practiced more elaborate rituals involving eggs, mirrors, or candles, each with specific procedures and interpretations.

These practices represented a domestication of ancient divination traditions, transforming magic into parlor game. They allowed young women, in particular, to exercise a form of romantic agency within the constraints of Victorian propriety. A woman could not propose marriage, could not openly declare romantic interest without risking her reputation, but she could perform these valentine divinations, discussing the results with friends, using them as a socially acceptable way to express romantic hopes and speculations.

Transatlantic Commerce

The twentieth century saw valentine customs increasingly commercialized and standardized. Hallmark, founded in 1910, began producing valentine cards in 1913. By 1916, the company was producing eleven million valentines annually. The introduction of mass production techniques—offset printing, die-cutting machines, automated envelope stuffing—made valentines cheaper and more accessible. Where Victorian valentines had been expensive luxuries, available primarily to the middle and upper classes, twentieth-century valentines became democratized.

But something was lost in this democratization. The mass-produced valentines of the twentieth century lacked the individuality and craftsmanship of their Victorian predecessors. Standard verses replaced personal composition, printed images supplanted hand-drawn illustrations, machine-made lace replaced real lace or intricate paper-cutting. The valentine became a commodity rather than a craft object, valued for its convenience rather than the skill and time invested in its creation.

The chocolate industry quickly attached itself to Valentine’s Day. Cadbury had produced the first heart-shaped chocolate box in 1861, marketed explicitly as a valentine gift. By the 1920s, chocolate manufacturers were spending enormous sums on Valentine’s Day advertising, linking their products indissolubly with romantic love. The practice spread from Britain to America and eventually worldwide. Today, the chocolate industry generates billions in Valentine’s Day revenue, with heart-shaped boxes and chocolate roses sold in virtually every country where the holiday is observed.

Flowers followed a similar trajectory. While individual florists had always seen increased business around Valentine’s Day, the twentieth century saw the flower industry organize systematic valentine campaigns. The Society of American Florists, founded in 1884, promoted Valentine’s Day as a crucial sales opportunity. By the 1920s, they were producing promotional materials for member florists, suggesting advertising copy and window displays. Red roses became so firmly associated with Valentine’s Day that their price regularly spikes in early February, sometimes doubling or tripling compared to other times of year.

Restaurants discovered Valentine’s Day in the mid-twentieth century, promoting special menus and romantic ambiance. What had been primarily a day for private exchange of cards and tokens became increasingly public and commercial. By the late twentieth century, Valentine’s Day had evolved into a major economic event, with American consumers spending billions annually on cards, candy, flowers, jewelry, and romantic dinners.

Global Diffusion and Local Adaptation

Valentine’s Day spread globally through the twentieth century, carried by American cultural influence, British colonial legacy, and increasingly globalized commerce. Each culture adapted the holiday to local circumstances, creating hybrid forms that mixed Valentine’s traditions with indigenous romantic customs.

In Japan, Valentine’s Day arrived in the 1950s, promoted aggressively by chocolate companies. It evolved into a unique custom where women give chocolate to men on February 14th, with men reciprocating on “White Day” (March 14th). Japanese Valentine’s chocolate falls into categories: giri-choco (obligation chocolate) given to male colleagues, bosses, and friends; honmei-choco (true feeling chocolate) given to romantic partners; and tomo-choco (friend chocolate) exchanged between female friends. The practice generates enormous revenue for chocolate manufacturers, with women reportedly spending an average of ¥5,000 to ¥10,000 annually on Valentine’s chocolate.

In South Korea, the custom extended further. In addition to Valentine’s Day and White Day, Koreans observe “Black Day” on April 14th, when singles who received nothing on Valentine’s or White Day gather to eat black noodles and commiserate. Other monthly celebrations follow: Rose Day in May, Kiss Day in June, and so on, creating a commercialized romantic calendar that extends throughout the year.

India has seen Valentine’s Day celebrations grow dramatically since the 1990s, despite resistance from conservative groups who view it as Western cultural imperialism threatening traditional values. Some Hindu nationalist organizations have organized protests and attacks on Valentine’s Day celebrants, viewing the holiday as encouraging inappropriate interactions between unmarried young people. Yet urban Indian youth have embraced Valentine’s Day enthusiastically, with shops selling cards, flowers, and gifts, and restaurants offering special Valentine’s menus. The holiday has become a flashpoint in broader cultural debates about Westernization, modernity, and appropriate gender relations.

In the Philippines, Valentine’s Day has become an occasion for mass weddings, with the government and shopping malls organizing group marriage ceremonies for hundreds of couples simultaneously. These events, offering free or discounted weddings in exchange for publicity, appeal to couples who cannot afford traditional elaborate Filipino wedding celebrations. The mass weddings transform Valentine’s Day into a collective rather than individual celebration, creating community around romantic commitment.

Latin American countries had their own romantic traditions before Valentine’s Day arrived, and the holiday has blended with these existing customs. In some countries, Valentine’s Day is called El Día del Amor y la Amistad (The Day of Love and Friendship), emphasizing friendship alongside romantic love. Guatemala observes Día del Cariño (Affection Day), Colombia celebrates Día del Amor y Amistad in September rather than February, and Brazil’s equivalent, Dia dos Namorados, falls on June 12th.

The Modern Valentine

Today, St Valentine’s Day generates billions in revenue across the anglophone world and beyond. In the United States alone, consumers spend an estimated $25 billion annually on Valentine’s Day gifts, cards, and celebrations. The National Retail Federation estimates that average American spending per person exceeds $190, with jewelry accounting for the largest single category ($6 billion), followed by evening outings ($4.3 billion), flowers ($2.4 billion), clothing ($2.9 billion), and candy ($2.4 billion). Approximately 145 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged annually, making it the second-largest card-sending holiday after Christmas.

The saint himself was quietly removed from the Catholic Church’s liturgical calendar in 1969, part of a reform that stripped away figures whose historical existence could not be adequately verified. The Second Vatican Council’s reforms sought to streamline the liturgical calendar, removing saints whose feast days had been based on questionable historical sources or whose cults lacked sufficient documentation. Valentine joined numerous other traditional saints—including Christopher, patron of travelers, and Catherine of Alexandria, patron of philosophers—in being relegated to optional local observance rather than universal celebration.

Yet his cultural presence has never been stronger. The Church’s official decanonization has done nothing to diminish popular devotion or commercial exploitation. If anything, Valentine’s Day has become more prominent in the decades since 1969, spreading to countries and cultures that had no previous connection to the martyred priest. Chocolate boxes, roses, restaurant reservations, greeting cards, jewelry, lingerie, weekend getaways—all testify to the enduring power of a saint whose actual life remains almost entirely unknown.

The holiday has also evolved to include non-romantic relationships. Elementary schools organize classroom valentine exchanges, where children give cards to all their classmates, transforming Valentine’s Day into a lesson in inclusive kindness rather than exclusive romantic selection. “Galentine’s Day,” celebrated on February 13th and popularized by the American television show “Parks and Recreation,” offers women an opportunity to celebrate female friendship. “Singles Awareness Day” (S.A.D.) provides an ironic counter-celebration for those without romantic partners.

Social media has transformed valentine customs yet again. Instagram posts declaring love, Facebook relationship status changes timed for Valentine’s Day, elaborate public proposals documented on YouTube—the private declaration of affection has become increasingly public performance. The pressure to demonstrate romantic happiness on social media has created what some psychologists call “Valentine’s Day anxiety,” particularly among young adults who feel obligated to perform romantic success for an audience of friends and strangers.

Critics have long objected to Valentine’s Day’s commercialization, arguing that the holiday has become an obligation rather than a celebration, that manufactured sentiment replaces genuine emotion, that commerce has corrupted what should be spontaneous expressions of love. Every February brings opinion pieces condemning Valentine’s Day as a Hallmark holiday, a cynical commercial invention designed to extract money from consumers. Yet these critiques miss something essential: human beings have always formalized and ritualized love. The ancient Romans had Lupercalia, medieval Europeans had courtly love traditions, and we have Valentine’s Day. The commercial aspects may be modern, but the impulse to set aside time for romantic celebration is ancient.

The Palimpsest of Love

What we celebrate on 14 February is less a historical person than a palimpsest: layers of meaning accumulated across two millennia, each generation adding its own interpretations and erasing inconvenient complexities. The martyred priest, the medieval poet’s fancy, the Victorian sentimentalist, the modern commercial engine—all these Valentines coexist, each real in its own way, none quite historical in the sense of being historically verifiable.

Valentine’s story illustrates how legends form and transform, how history and myth interweave, how human needs shape the stories we tell about the past. We take fragments—a name in a martyrology, a tomb in a catacomb, a medieval hagiography—and construct from them elaborate narratives that serve present purposes. The historical Valentine, if he existed, was probably an obscure priest or bishop who died during one of the periodic Roman persecutions of Christians. His martyrdom was likely unremarkable by the standards of the time; hundreds or thousands of Christians died similarly in the third century. That this particular Valentine became associated with romantic love required centuries of cultural development and a series of historical accidents that could not have been predicted.

Chaucer might have chosen any saint’s day in mid-February for his poem. That he chose Valentine rather than another saint was likely arbitrary, based on nothing more than the pleasing sound of the name or its position in the calendar. Yet that arbitrary choice, amplified through centuries of literary tradition and commercial exploitation, transformed an obscure martyr into the patron of lovers worldwide. Had Chaucer chosen differently, we might today be celebrating St. Apollonia’s Day (February 9th) or St. Scholastica’s Day (February 10th) with chocolate and roses, and Valentine would remain an obscure figure known only to scholars of early Christian martyrology.

This is not to dismiss Valentine’s Day as meaningless, but rather to recognize it as a supreme example of cultural creativity. The gap between historical Valentine and romantic Valentine is not a failure of scholarship but a testament to humanity’s capacity to invest symbols with meaning, to transform the past into something useful for the present. Every culture does this constantly, creating origin stories that explain and legitimize contemporary practices. Valentine’s Day simply makes this process unusually transparent, the historical discontinuities unusually visible.

Perhaps that is fitting. Valentine’s Day, after all, has always been about the stories we tell—about love, about sacrifice, about the human need to formalize and celebrate our deepest attachments. Whether Valentine was one person or three, whether he married secret couples or simply died for his faith, matters less than what his name has come to represent: the courage to love openly, the value of declaring feeling, the sweet vulnerability of offering one’s heart to another.

Contemporary Controversies and Future Trajectories

The twenty-first century has brought new dimensions to Valentine’s Day observance and new controversies about its meaning. The holiday has become entangled in debates about gender, sexuality, commercialism, and cultural authenticity that would have been unimaginable to earlier generations.

LGBTQ+ communities have increasingly claimed Valentine’s Day as an occasion to celebrate same-sex relationships, particularly as marriage equality has expanded globally. Same-sex couples post engagement announcements timed for Valentine’s Day, gay and lesbian couples exchange the same cards and chocolates as heterosexual couples, and queer culture has developed its own Valentine’s traditions. This represents a significant shift in a holiday that was historically framed entirely around heterosexual courtship. The traditional Valentine’s imagery—often depicting couples in strictly gender-binary terms—has slowly begun to diversify, with some card manufacturers offering same-sex couple cards and gender-neutral options.

Polyamorous communities face more complex challenges around Valentine’s Day, a holiday structured around exclusive pair-bonding. How does one celebrate Valentine’s Day when one has multiple romantic partners? Some polyamorous people reject the holiday entirely as incompatible with their relationship structure. Others celebrate multiple times, exchanging valentines with each partner individually. Still others create group celebrations that acknowledge the entire polycule. These adaptations push against Valentine’s Day’s fundamental assumption of romantic exclusivity, suggesting possible future evolutions of the holiday.

The rise of dating apps and online relationships has created new Valentine’s Day rituals. Couples who met on Tinder or Bumble sometimes celebrate their “match anniversary” on Valentine’s Day if it falls near the date they first connected. Long-distance couples maintain Valentine’s Day connections through video calls, coordinate simultaneous dinners in different time zones, or exchange digital valentines. The pandemic years of 2020-2022 accelerated these virtual valentine practices, as lockdowns made traditional romantic dinners impossible for many couples. Some of these pandemic-era innovations—virtual cooking dates, synchronized movie watching, elaborate delivery surprises—have persisted even as restrictions lifted.

Environmental concerns have prompted some consumers to seek “sustainable valentines.” Critics point out that the Valentine’s Day flower industry, particularly the rose trade, involves significant environmental costs. Most roses sold in North America and Europe are imported from South America or Africa, transported by refrigerated air freight, requiring enormous energy expenditure. The roses are often grown with heavy pesticide use, and workers in the flower industry frequently labor under poor conditions for minimal wages. Some consumers now seek locally grown flowers, potted plants rather than cut flowers, or eschew flowers entirely in favor of experiences or charitable donations in their partner’s name.

The chocolate industry faces similar scrutiny. Much of the world’s cocoa is grown in West Africa under conditions that sometimes involve child labor and deforestation. Fair trade chocolate brands have grown in popularity, appealing to consumers who want their Valentine’s Day purchases to align with ethical values. Yet fair trade products typically cost more, creating a class dimension to ethical consumption. Who can afford to be ethical becomes itself an ethical question.

Anti-consumerist movements have long criticized Valentine’s Day, but contemporary critics add new dimensions to the critique. They argue that the holiday creates artificial scarcity and price inflation—why should flowers cost three times as much on February 14th? They question whether genuine romantic love can be expressed through mass-produced commodities. They note that Valentine’s Day creates particular pressure on people in new or troubled relationships, forcing premature declarations or exposing relationship problems. The performance of romantic happiness that Valentine’s Day demands can feel oppressive, particularly when that performance increasingly takes place on social media for public consumption.

Yet for all these critiques, Valentine’s Day shows little sign of disappearing. If anything, it continues to expand and evolve. New commercial categories emerge regularly: Valentine’s Day gifts for pets, Valentine’s celebrations for children, Valentine’s merchandise for singles. The holiday has proved remarkably resilient, adapting to changing social mores, incorporating new technologies, surviving critical backlash. This resilience suggests that Valentine’s Day fulfills needs that transcend its commercial manifestations.

The Psychology of Valentine’s Day

Psychologists and sociologists have studied Valentine’s Day extensively, trying to understand its psychological and social functions. Their research reveals that the holiday serves multiple purposes beyond simple commercial exploitation.

Valentine’s Day provides what psychologists call a “relationship checkpoint,” an occasion that prompts couples to explicitly acknowledge and evaluate their relationship. The question “What are we doing for Valentine’s Day?” forces couples to confront where they stand. Are they serious enough to celebrate Valentine’s Day together? If so, how elaborate should the celebration be? The holiday creates a structured opportunity for relationship definition that might otherwise remain ambiguous. This can be valuable—helping couples clarify expectations and commitment levels—or stressful, forcing premature relationship evaluations.

For established couples, Valentine’s Day serves as what sociologist Viviana Zelizer calls “relationship maintenance work.” Long-term relationships require ongoing effort to maintain romance amid the mundane demands of daily life. Valentine’s Day provides a designated occasion for this maintenance, a cultural prompt to step outside routine and rekindle romantic feelings. Critics dismiss this as artificial, but routines and rituals serve important psychological functions. Just as religious holidays provide structured occasions for spiritual reflection, Valentine’s Day provides structured occasions for romantic reflection.

The holiday also serves important social signaling functions. Displaying Valentine’s gifts at work, posting Valentine’s Day photos on social media, or discussing Valentine’s plans with friends—all these behaviors communicate relationship status and romantic success to one’s social network. Evolutionary psychologists argue that such signaling has adaptive value, broadcasting that one is in a successful relationship and therefore off the market, which can reduce unwanted romantic attention from others.

For singles, Valentine’s Day can be psychologically challenging, particularly in cultures where romantic relationship status is closely tied to social worth. Studies show that self-reported loneliness and depression increase around Valentine’s Day among single individuals, particularly those who desire romantic relationships. Yet other research finds that many singles report indifference or even relief about being single on Valentine’s Day, enjoying freedom from the holiday’s pressures and obligations. The “Singles Awareness Day” counter-celebration represents an attempt to reclaim the date, transforming potential stigma into celebration.

Children’s classroom valentine exchanges serve developmental functions beyond simple fun. Developmental psychologists note that these exchanges teach social skills—remembering to bring valentines for everyone, writing names correctly, expressing appreciation. The inclusive ethos of classroom exchanges—where every child gives and receives valentines from every other child—models prosocial behavior and helps children feel socially included. Teachers report that classroom valentine exchanges can improve classroom cohesion and help integrate marginalized children into peer groups.

Valentine’s Day and the Meaning of Love

At its deepest level, Valentine’s Day raises questions about the nature of love itself. What is love? How should it be expressed? Can genuine emotion be scheduled? These questions have no simple answers, but Valentine’s Day’s very existence forces us to grapple with them.

The philosopher Simon May argues that modern Western culture has elevated romantic love to quasi-religious status, making it the primary source of meaning and fulfillment in life. Valentine’s Day exemplifies this romantic love ideology, celebrating passionate romantic attachment as life’s highest good. This represents a dramatic shift from earlier eras when duty, honor, family, or religious devotion might have taken precedence over romantic feeling. The medieval Valentine who defied imperial authority to perform Christian marriages valued religious duty over romantic love; the modern Valentine’s Day reverses this priority, celebrating romantic love as the ultimate value.

Yet romantic love ideology creates problems. By elevating romantic love so high, we may set impossible standards, expecting our romantic partners to fulfill needs that no single person can meet. The “soulmate” concept, central to contemporary romantic ideology, suggests there is one perfect person for each of us—a notion that historian Stephanie Coontz calls “historically unprecedented and potentially damaging.” When we expect our romantic partner to be our best friend, our passionate lover, our intellectual companion, our co-parent, our financial partner, and our emotional support system all at once, we may be asking too much.

Valentine’s Day both reflects and reinforces this romantic love ideology. The holiday’s rituals—the grand gestures, the perfect gifts, the romantic declarations—suggest that true love should be overwhelming and all-consuming. Yet relationship researchers consistently find that long-term relationship success depends less on passionate intensity than on more mundane qualities: communication skills, conflict resolution abilities, compatible values, mutual respect. The romantic fireworks that Valentine’s Day celebrates may matter less than the daily kindnesses that the holiday ignores.

Some philosophers and cultural critics have argued for reconceiving Valentine’s Day to celebrate broader forms of love beyond romantic partnership. The Greek language distinguished multiple forms of love: eros (romantic/sexual love), philia (friendship), storge (familial affection), agape (universal love/charity). Modern English collapses these distinctions into the single word “love,” but the differences remain significant. Why, critics ask, should we celebrate only eros on Valentine’s Day? Why not honor philia as well, or storge, or agape?

Some contemporary observers have embraced this broader vision. Galentine’s Day celebrations of female friendship represent one such expansion. Parents buying valentines for their children, friends exchanging platonic valentines, people performing random acts of kindness for strangers on Valentine’s Day—all these practices stretch the holiday beyond romantic exclusivity toward more inclusive love. Whether this represents a dilution of Valentine’s Day’s meaning or an enrichment depends on one’s perspective.

The Enduring Mystery

We return, finally, to Valentine himself—or themselves. Despite two thousand years of devotion, despite centuries of scholarly investigation, despite the relics distributed across continents, we remain fundamentally uncertain about who Valentine was and what he actually did. The historical record is silent or contradictory. The archaeological evidence is ambiguous. The literary sources are unreliable.

This uncertainty is, in a sense, perfect. Valentine remains mysterious precisely because we have projected so much onto him. He can be whatever we need him to be: the defiant priest, the compassionate healer, the romantic poet, the martyr for love. His very blankness makes him an ideal canvas for cultural meaning-making. Had we possessed detailed historical sources documenting Valentine’s actual life—his birthplace, his family, his education, his specific acts of ministry, the exact circumstances of his death—he might have remained merely historical, bounded by the specifics of third-century Rome. Instead, his obscurity has allowed him to become universal.

The great paradox of Valentine’s Day is that it celebrates a saint we don’t know by engaging in customs he never practiced to express values he probably didn’t hold. Valentine the historical figure bears almost no relationship to Valentine’s Day the cultural practice. Yet this discontinuity doesn’t invalidate the holiday. Rather, it reveals something profound about how culture works, how symbols function, how human communities create meaning.

Valentine’s Day succeeds not because of historical authenticity but because it meets human needs. We need occasions to declare love, rituals to mark relationships, excuses to break routine, opportunities to express feeling. We need symbols and stories that give shape to our emotions, that transform private feelings into public acknowledgment, that connect individual experience to larger cultural narratives. Valentine’s Day provides all this, and whether the historical Valentine ever existed matters surprisingly little to the holiday’s cultural power.

The relics in Dublin, Vienna, Rome, and Glasgow continue to draw pilgrims. Whether these bones actually belonged to St Valentine the martyr is unknowable and perhaps unimportant. What matters is what they represent: continuity with the past, connection to sacred tradition, physical embodiment of abstract ideals. The pilgrim who prays before Valentine’s relics participates in a devotional tradition stretching back sixteen centuries, joining a community of believers across time. The historical authenticity of the relics is less significant than their symbolic and devotional function.

Similarly, the couple exchanging valentines on February 14th participates in traditions reaching back to medieval Europe, to Geoffrey Chaucer and Charles of Orleans, to Victorian lovers and Georgian poets. They join a vast community of lovers across time, all using ritualized expressions to declare feelings that are individually unique yet universally shared. Whether Valentine actually married secret couples or wrote letters from prison matters less than the story’s symbolic truth: that love is worth sacrifice, that human connection transcends authority, that romantic devotion deserves celebration.

The Saint We Made

In the end, Valentine might be best understood not as a historical figure but as a cultural creation—a collective project spanning two millennia, involving countless contributors, constantly evolving yet recognizably continuous. The martyred priest, if he existed, provided the raw material: a name, a date, a death. Subsequent generations added layers: medieval hagiographers embellished his story, Chaucer connected him to romantic love, Victorian entrepreneurs commercialized his feast day, modern corporations globalized his celebration.

Each addition changed Valentine’s meaning, yet each claimed continuity with tradition. This is how culture works—constantly innovating while claiming ancient authority, forever changing while insisting on continuity. Valentine’s Day is tradition in the truest sense: not static inheritance but living practice, not fixed meaning but ongoing interpretation.

The historical Valentine, shadowy and uncertain, has given way to the Valentine we made—patron of lovers, symbol of romance, excuse for chocolate and flowers. This Valentine, born of poetry and commerce, faith and fantasy, may be “false” in historical terms but is profoundly true in cultural terms. He represents our collective investment in love’s importance, our shared belief that romantic connection deserves celebration, our common need for rituals that mark relationship and express feeling.

On February 14th each year, millions of people participate in Valentine’s rituals—exchanging cards, giving gifts, sharing meals, making declarations. Most know nothing of martyred priests or medieval poetry, Roman festivals or Victorian symbolism. They participate not because of history but despite it, creating new meaning from old forms, adapting tradition to contemporary needs. The saint they honor is the saint we made: patron not of any historical church but of the human heart, martyr not to Roman persecution but to love’s transformative power.

Valentine’s story, finally, is our story—the story of how human communities create meaning, how symbols persist and transform, how the past shapes the present while the present constantly reinvents the past. The gap between the historical Valentine and the modern holiday is not a problem to be solved but a phenomenon to be understood, evidence of culture’s creative power and human meaning-making capacity.

As we navigate another Valentine’s Day—whether celebrating, ignoring, or protesting it—we participate in this ongoing cultural creation. We add our own layer to the palimpsest, our own verse to the centuries-long poem, our own thread to the tangled story. And the mysterious saint, whoever he was, whoever he has become, presides over it all: patron of a holiday he never imagined, symbol of meanings he never intended, eternal witness to love’s strange power to create legends from fragments, traditions from accidents, and meaning from mystery.