This is the “Will You Be My Valentine?” month.  School children swap Valentine’s Day cards, teachers rearrange their desks to accommodate all the mugs, scented soaps, and candles gifted by students.  Husbands bring home heart shaped boxes of assorted chocolates or, perhaps, a dozen sweet smelling roses.  I’ve often wondered how this day, February 14th, came to be.  Is it another invention of the Hallmark Greeting Card company?  Or can we trace it farther back?  Maybe even to Pagan days?

In fact, some scholars date its origins to Roman times, when two different Catholic martyrs, one was named Valentine, were executed in different years but on the same day of the month. February 14th.  I’m not sure how anything romantic could be spun from this except that another story claims that Valentine wrote the first “valentine” to a girl he had tutored and fell in love with while he was imprisoned for the crimes he was executed for.  According to The History Channel, before his death, he wrote her a letter signed “From your Valentine.” Awe!

Other scholars attribute the celebration of this holiday to the poet Chaucer who wrote his 14th-century works “The Parliament of Fowls.” At the time, February 14 also happened to be the first day of spring in Britain, and the beginning of the bird mating season—and as we know, many birds will mate for life.

Valentine’s Day became the commercialized celebration we know today by the mid 19th century. Cupid, the son of the Goddess of Love, Venus was probably added by then. 

Whatever legend you believe, the day is significant as a day we should observe a day of love.  After all, that’s what the world needs right now.