The Real Origin of Valentine's Day | Heartscaping with Cha Higginson The Soul Strategist

Beautiful Cha - I love learning history through your vids, like last Easter when you taught the origins of Easter 🐣 Happy Valentines to you and yours and happy birthday to your bro 😉

With respect to the Lupercalia-Valentine’s connection, most scholars would argue that there is absolutely no connection between two whatsoever.

The earliest attested historical record of the Lupercalia comes from the 3rd century BCE, while the last record was from the end of the 5th century CE — around the same time Pope Gelasius I made February 14 into a day that would honor the Christian martyr, Saint Valentine.

Further, Lupercalia was a very local thing; it was held almost exclusively in Rome. There are only scant references to it being held anywhere else. It was not a Roman Empire-wide celebration; thus, could not have possibly been the seeding of some sort of “proto-Valentine’s Day” across Europe.

At no point however does Gelasius speak of compromise, or of adapting any pagan customs. Even though they weren’t far apart chronologically, the supposed symbolic overlap between the two took centuries more to develop, as Valentine’s Day hadn’t yet acquired the romantic meaning it has today. In the early church, this would have been a solemn celebration; not the holiday it is today. Indeed, it is quite possible that Gelasius was partly responsible for Lupercalia’s decline. The early church never "Christianized" Lupercalia.

There just isn’t any historical evidence to suggest that one was replaced by another.

Valentine’s Day and romance became associated with each other only in the late 14th century with a few well-known poems of Geoffrey Chaucer (of Canterbury Tales fame). That’s a pretty huge gap between the late 1300’s and the end of Lupercalia in the 400’s. A thousand year gap where nothing resembling Lupercalia or romance and Valentine’s Day is historically attested or recorded.

It would seem, under closer examination, that a supposed connection between Valentine’s Day and the Roman Lupercalia lies solely within the realm of some very wishful thinking.