Years before anybody had heard of Saint Valentine to bring romance into the equation, mid-February was looked forward to as a lusty occasion for lovers. As early as 400 years BC, the Romans took part in a special lottery in honor of their god Lupercus. The names of teenage women were put into a box and then selected at random by eager young men. The couples thus selected then found themselves effectively ‘married’ for the rest of the year.

600 years later, the warlike emperor Claudius II banned marriage for young men—because he took it into his head that single men were more efficient warriors.

It is believed that a Christian bishop, Valentine, dared to disagree with Claudius and disobeyed the law and performed secret marriage ceremonies until Claudius found out and first imprisoned him, and finally had him brutally executed on February 24th, 270.

While he was imprisoned, Valentine fell deeply in love with his guard’s daughter and after he was taken to his death, he left her a note which he ended with, ‘From your Valentine.’

Taking Valentine’s name in vain, the by now established Christian Church, in AD 496, saw a great opportunity to finally abolish the traditional partnership sweepstake held to worship the god Lupercus and so decreed a small change in the rules:

After that, either gender would pick a name out of the hat, but now they wouldn’t get the expected year of ‘marriage’ (or, indeed, the more earthy benefits that were implied), they now had to pick out a Saint whose life they were expected to emulate over the coming twelve months.

Must have been quite a disappointment for the hot-bloodied young Romans!

The day of the new-style lottery was named after Saint Valentine whose choice, over 220 years after his execution, was in order to usurp the pagan god than to signify love.

As politicians through the ages often forget, the public’s memory was stronger than new political ideology—especially when as unpopular as this and Saint Valentine remained synonymous with passion and love. The young Roman males, deprived of their lottery, took instead to giving hand-written notes to the young ladies they admired on February 14th.

And so, our modern love of distributing and receiving Valentine cards was was introduced over 1500 years ago!

The earliest known card that still exists is owned by the British Museum. It was sent by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife in 1415. The poor man was a ‘guest’ in the Tower of London at the time and so his emotions were probably at an intense level!

In the sixteenth century the Bishop of Geneva made efforts to restart the yearly ‘live like a saint’ lottery, but unsurprisingly interest was low. February 14th was by then too firmly associated with lovers for the Church to successfully interfere.

In the early Regency period, in 1797 a British publisher, who would have done very well in modern Internet times, published a guidebook called ‘The Young Man’s Valentine Writer’ which offered pages of pre-written Valentines messages for those who couldn’t write their own.

Sending Valentines cards anonymously began in Victorian times. The publicly highly repressed Victorians secretly loved anything that hinted at being ‘naughty’, but publicly were obliged to maintain an aura of respectful purity. As a consequence the messages in Victorian cards became more and more obscene, but the authors were able to maintain their respectability from behind their self-imposed anonymity.

The first publisher of Valentine’s cards in the U.S., Esther Holland was able to charge up to $35 for a single card. That was a fortune in 1870!

As a matter of interest love messages are traditionally ended with an ‘x’ because in days of illiteracy, it was legally acceptable for a person to draw a cross as their signature. To convey the effect of an oath, people would draw their cross and kiss it—much the same as they would kiss the Holy Bible. Unsurprisingly the hand-drawn X and the kiss became one and the same.

I wish you a love-filled Valentine’s day!