Valentine's Inspiration

Valentine’s Day – the only holiday best celebrated in pairs

For all its popularity history doesn’t give us any guarantees as to the origins of Valentine’s Day, but we know that it contains vestiges of early Christian Church and ancient Rome. The association between Mid February and romance goes back to the Pagan festival known as Lupercalia – likely honoring either Lupa – the Sheep-Wolf of Rome who suckled Romulus and Remus or Faunas, their God of fertility. In the 5th century, perhaps in effort to Christianise the Pagan festival, Pope Julius declared February 14th as St Valentine Day. As for the real St Valentines, there were reportedly several cannonised by the Church. Legend has it that one St Valentine, a defiant Roman Priest, lived during the 3rd century AD under the Emperor Claudius II.  Claudius was an ambitious ruler and his battles required vast armies of men to abandon their young families for long periods of time, resulting in a military that was half–hearted and homesick. So determined was Claudius to stop love from sapping the will of his armies that he banned marriages all together.  Father Valentine thought the ban so unjust; he defied the Emperor by continuing to marry young lovers in secret.  The Emperor eventually caught onto the priest’s actions, arrested him and sentenced him to death.  It is believed that young couples whom he secretly wed visited his cell passing him flowers and notes through the bars as symbols of their gratitude.  The story continues that the condemned father Valentine fell in love with his jailer’s daughter.  On February 14th the day he was executed it is said that he passed the young girl a note – it was signed ‘From your Valentine’.  A tradition was born….