OPINION: Making Valentine’s Day more meaningful
Valentine’s Day, it seems, has all the trappings of a made-up Hallmark holiday. It’s a holiday created purely to encourage us to go out and give our money to a few select industries: greeting cards, candy, roses, restaurants, etc.
As it turns out, the holiday has a history. Obviously, there’s the link to St. Valentine — but given the Catholic Church’s views on sex, why would they turn their saint’s day into a romantic night for couples? Some historians think the holiday actually dates back before Christianity to a Roman fertility festival called Lupercalia.
Others theorize that the actual St. Valentine was a hero of love, secretly performing marriages during Roman times after the Emperor forbid them. Or perhaps the link between Valentine’s Day and love — or at least sex — was solidified in the Middle Ages, thanks to the belief that February 14 marked the start of birds’ mating seasons.