Valentine’s Day is a week from tomorrow and it means there are only eight more days to decide what to do to show the one you love that you care, not that I would ever imply that any of us aren’t prepared or know exactly what we’re doing. To take our minds off of the ideas of what to get our loved ones, let’s take a look at the origins of the modern day candy industrial complex.
The origins of Valentine’s Day go back to the Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia. Honoring the she wolf mother of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. The festival started with an animal sacrifice and a footrace of young men who would whip women in the crowd with strips of the skin of the sacrifice in order to bestow fertility on those that were struck. For anyone that remembers reading Julius Caesar in high school literature, the beginning hopefully makes way more sense now.
Pope Gelasius officially declared February 14th as Saint Valentine’s Day in honor Saint Valentine. Multiple clerics were named Saint Valentine, but the namesake is usually attributed to Saint Valentine who lived during the third century under Emperor Claudius. Claudius outlawed the institution of marriage under the idea that single men made better soldiers. Valentine defied this and continued to marry couples in secret until he was eventually discovered and sentenced to be executed. While in prison, couples would visit Valentine and slip him notes and flowers through the bars of his cage. Supposedly, on his way to the execution platform one admirer handed him a note that read, “For my valentine”.
Valentine’s Day didn’t become associated outright with love and romance until some time in 1300s. Once it did though, it evolved into the Valentine’s Day we know today over the next 500 years with the first mass produced Valentine’s Day cards being produced in 1840. These days Americans buy nearly 180 million roses, 35 million boxes of chocolates and spend roughly 14 billion dollars annually on the holiday.
If everyone else is giving their loved ones candy and flowers, we say be a trailblazer and show how strong your love is with something that will last. Socks! You can be on the nose with it and tell them that you love them or slip into something a little more comfortable.