Celebrating depravity origins, romantic traditions, and modern commercial invention: the history of Valentine’s Day is all of these things at the same time.
The February 14 holiday, celebrated almost everywhere in the world, honors couples in Europe, celebrates friendship more broadly in the United States, and is a female ritual in Japan.
A historical reminder and overview of Valentine’s Day celebrations around the world:
The origin of Saint Valentine’s Day, the Lupercalia were Roman feasts of purification that were celebrated in mid-February. Young naked men had to flog young women to get them to have children.
These festivals are the predecessors of medieval carnivals that gradually culminated in Valentine’s Day with their lottery for lovers, as French sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann explains in his book “Saint Valentine, my love!”.
This holiday, of course, is associated with the cult of the Roman priest Valentine, who was beheaded on February 14, in the third century, for his celebration of Christian marriages.
Legend has it that Valentine cured his jailer’s daughter from blindness and that the day before his martyrdom, he threw a signed note “Your Valentine”.
This “myth was invented later because the religious and political authorities needed this storytelling,” Jean-Claude Kaufmann reports.
The lottery for lovers has been practiced since the end of the Middle Ages in England and France, linking writing sweet notes with Valentine’s Day celebrations, according to archaeologist Natalie Koppel.
During the reign of Louis XIV, the French writer Gabriel de Gilrage described this game as follows: “You have to put the names of thirty men and thirty women on sixty pieces of paper, to copy sixty madrigals separately. Having drawn the names of a man and a woman separately, we draw a madrigaline, to see What they say to each other.
In England, banknotes are turned into “Valentine’s Day,” sweet words that young lovers address to each other on February 14. The development of the post office in the nineteenth century gave impetus to these exchanges.
In the mid-19th century and in the United States, the modern and commercial take on Valentine’s Day took off, thanks to the invention of manufactured cards that had to be mailed to the person in love/in love.
Jean-Claude Kaufmann says the success of this party, new to the United States, is “amazing”. The promoters also soon had the idea of expanding the target audience of lovers to a larger segment of parents, children, friends or neighbours.
Today, the American version of Valentine’s Day is a huge celebration of love, friendship, and affection, which is estimated to be $23.9 billion to be spent in 2022. From the American Trade Federation, NRF.
In Japan, the emergence of Valentine’s Day dates back to the aftermath of World War II when confectionery manufacturers had the idea of making February 14 a day when women would give out chocolate.
Half a century later, the tradition is well established: millions of Japanese women offer praline or ganache on Valentine’s Day as a sign of affection, friendship or professional respect, with very specific rules.
“Giri-choko,” the chocolate of commitment, is reserved for colleagues and superiors while “honmei-choko,” the high-quality chocolate, is nothing but a sign of “true love,” Japanese teacher and translator Namiko Abe explains.
Jean-Claude Kaufmann stated that the celebration of Valentine’s Day is prohibited or threatened in about thirty countries. These are special Islamic countries.
In Pakistan, a high court in Islamabad in 2017 banned public celebrations of Valentine’s Day and ordered the media not to promote Valentine’s Day, in a country where the vast majority of marriages are arranged.
