Valentine’s Day is a holiday with ambiguous origins, with nobody being completely certain where the tradition of celebrating romance on the 14th February came from.

Some scholars consider the source to be the Ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, a celebration of fertility occurring in mid-February. Lupercalia was considered to be a time where religious rites cleansed the city, promoting health and fertility through sacrifice and celebration. The pagan celebration was outlawed by Pope Gelasius I in the 5th century AD.

The name ‘St. Valentine’s Day’ comes from an association with two potential Christian martyrs, both called Valentine. Both men were priests, although the narratives that associate them with the eponymous name are slightly different. The first Valentine was martyred in 270 AD, and by some accounts befriended the daughter of his jailor and cured her of blindness. Before his execution, he wrote a farewell letter to the girl, signing it ‘From your Valentine’.

The other story describes the bishop Valentine of Terni, another martyred priest, who was executed for secretly marrying couples against the emperor’s orders. It is through this story that the association with love appeared. The priest is believed to have worn an amethyst ring, which soldiers would recognise and then ask him to perform a marriage ceremony for them. As a result, the amethyst became the birthstone of February.

The holiday came to be associated with romance in the 14th century, with the first recorded reference occurring in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Parliament of Fowls. Valentine’s messages first began to emerge in the 1500s, with commercialised greeting cards appearing in the late 1700s. Nowadays, the day is more about red roses, chocolates and cards with little Cupids than it would have been during its ancient origins, but it is heart-warming to think of people in times gone by celebrating love on February 14th, just as we do today.