Valentines day has origins in the Roman pagan festival of Lupercalia, held in mid-February. The festival, which celebrated the coming of spring, included fertility rites and the pairing off of women with men by lottery. As a fertility rite, the festival is also associated with the god Faunus. Faunus was originally worshipped throughout the countryside as a bestower of fruitfulness on fields and flocks. He eventually became primarily a woodland deity; the sounds of the forest being regarded as his voice. A grandson of Saturn, Faunus was typically represented as half man, half goat. Lupercalia was a celebration of fertility held partly in his honour each February. From February 13th to 15th, Youths clothed as goats ran through the streets wielding strips of goatskin. The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain.
They would drink and get drunk. Young women would line up for the men to hit them, they believed this would make them fertile.
At the end of the 5th century, Pope Gelasius I forbid the celebration of Lupercalia and is sometimes attributed with replacing it with St. Valentine’s Day, Valentine’s Day did not come to be celebrated as a day of romance until about the 14th century.
How the 14th of Feb adopted the name Valentines Day
As for the name ‘Valentines Day’, then it comes from a Christian priest who was martyred. There was more than one Christian priest that were killed named Valentine. Thus, but it is claimed that day may have taken its name from the Valentine that was killed about 270CE by emperor Claudius II Gothicus
Emperor Claudius II executed two men — both named Valentine — on February 14th of different years in the third century. Their martyrdom was honoured by the Catholic Church with the celebration of St. Valentine’s Day.
It is said that one of the Valentines may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured. Some hold that St Valentines defied the emperor’s orders and secretly married couples to spare the husbands from war. It is for this reason that the day is associated with love. The imprisoned Valentine is said to have sent the first “valentine” greeting himself after he fell in love with a young girl—apparently his jailor’s daughter—who visited him during his confinement.
Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed “From your Valentine,” an expression that is still in use today.
Thus, this pagan festivity was merged with the honouring of this ‘martyred’ priest and Valentines Day was born.
The Muslim celebrates love every day. The love of Allah, the love of his parents, the love of one’s wife or husband, the love of one’s children, the love of one’s siblings, the love of ones Muslims brothers or sisters. Why would we need to partake in a pagan/Christian festivity to do so?
