I’d heard that greeting card companies invented Valentine’s Day as a way to sell cards, and well, I didn’t believe it. So, as a budding romance novelist, I took it upon myself to look it up on ye olde trusty internet.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, there were three martyrs named Valentine, two of whom died in the 3rd century (maybe) and one of whom died in Africa at an unknown date. None of them seem to have anything to do with love. But that’s where we get the name from.

Though there are many debates as to why the mid-February date (some claiming it has to do with when one of those Valentines was buried), mid-February is also the date for the ancient Roman Lupercalia, a fertility festival that was celebrated on the Ides of February (Feb 15). This festival, according to…. somebody at the University of Chicago (there’s like 3 names on the site, and I’m not sure who actually wrote the article)… involved sacrificing goats and puppies in front of a cave, then two virile young men (called the Luperci) approached the altar, painted each other’s foreheads with the sacrificial blood, wiped it off with milk, and then had to start laughing (which I’m guessing wasn’t hard, provided the sacrificing puppies didn’t get you down too much). Then everybody ate, got drunk, and the Luperci then ran through the town dressed in goat skins and spanked people (particularly women who wanted to get pregnant) with mini-whips made of more goat-skin.

Now that’s a Valentine’s party for you – two drunken, nubile men running around town in loincloths spanking women.

A Catholic legend (according to history.com), which tells why we send cards on Valentine’s Day, says that one of those martyred Valentines fell in love with the jailer’s daughter while he was in prison (some say for marrying couples against the Emperor’s orders). Before he was executed, he left a note for her signed, “From your Valentine.”

During the Middle Ages, Chaucer made a reference to Valentines Day and love in a poem (potentially the first connection between the two) when he wrote:

Though why birds would be choosing their mates in February is anybody’s guess (and, according to wikipedia.org, he in fact wrote this for the engagement of two 15 year old royals, an agreement that was arranged on May 2, 1381)

Shakespeare includes a reference to Valentine’s Day during one of Ophelia’s rants… and the part of the play where (most people interpret) we find out that a lot of her crazy comes from Hamlet rejecting her after she, uh, gave it up:

To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes,
And dupp’d the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.

So, I’m going to go with pretty clearly, Halmark did not, in fact, invent Valentine’s Day. So no matter how you choose to celebrate it – cards and chocolates, deflowering innocent virgins, marrying off teenagers, a good old fashioned spanking (and I do mean old fashioned), or taking the new wave train of finding a way to say “I love you!” to yourself – I hope you have a good one!