TODAY, Sunday, is often called “Valentine’s Sunday” since St Valentine’s Day falls within this week.  This year St Valentine’s Day falls on Tuesday, February 14, and throughout the Western World, it is celebrated as a day for lovers – a time when young lovers pledge their love for each other and when engagements and weddings often take place.

In the United States, the day is celebrated with greater elan than in other countries: The shops and even homes are decorated with the colour red enveloping everything and with Valentine’s motifs of Cupids, broad red hearts, and red roses, and the big shops are heavily stocked with chocolates in beautifully decorated boxes, cakes iced in Valentine colours with cupids and hearts on them, expensive perfumes and toiletries, jewellery especially diamond rings, fancifully wrapped gifts with red ribbons, real red roses or even artificial ones, and beautifully designed Valentine cards.  There are discreet advertisements of top-of-the-line restaurants where couples could dine.  Gifts for older friends, relatives, and small children are available, underscoring that Valentine’s Day encompasses all loved ones though lovers are centre stage.  The staff of business places, especially female staff, are attired in red and white Valentine garments.  Business on Valentine’s Day in the USA is worth more than $20 Billions.

Before World War II, St Valentine’s Day was celebrated in Guyana as a quiet Church feast.  After World War II, with the spread of American culture, Valentine’s Day was quickly adopted into the Guyanese celebratory calendar, and the whole population became celebrants irrespective of their religious background.  In addition to the American borrowings of decorated and well-stocked shops with Valentine’s goods and the motifs of red hearts, Cupids and red roses, and so on, a Guyanese flavour was added to the celebration.  Young people would have their house parties and spontaneous engagements were often announced in the schools. The youngest children would make Valentine cards for their parents, and the older classes would present their teachers Valentine gifts.  As the feast day becomes more rooted, more Guyanese contributions would be made to the evolution of Valentine customs.

To most people, St Valentine’s Day is merely a celebratory day to be enjoyed and many even believe it was invented by the commercial community.  Its History begins in Roman times, that is, over two thousand years ago.

In Roman times, a fertility festival known as Lupercalia honouring Faunus, the god of fertility and crops, and Juno, the goddess of marriage, was celebrated between 13th and 15th February every year, but with all the main religious rites and robust celebrations taking place on 14th.  Goats were sacrificed to the gods and their skins were cut into small strips making switches with which the male celebrants would strike any female they encountered as they ran into the streets.  Any female who was switched would be assured of becoming pregnant in the coming year and many women placed themselves in the path of the celebrants to be touched by the switch.

From the first century A.D., Christianity began to make its way in Rome and by the third century it had become established among the lower classes.  Young men were becoming married at a higher rate than formerly and preferred to remain with their wives and children than enlist in the Army which was now affected by a serious shortage of recruits.  Emperor Claudius, therefore, issued a decree against marriages.

Many young couples still desired marriage, and Bishop Valentinus secretly performed such marriages.  Eventually, Emperor Claudius learned of the Bishop’s ignoring of his decree and had him arrested and imprisoned.  Bishop Valentine was a person who practised loving kindness to all and was loved and respected by all who met him.  The jailor soon became a friend of Bishop Valentine and asked him if he could restore sight to his young daughter Julia who was blind.  With prayer and the intercession of God, Julia was cured.  The jailor and his family then became Christians.

The Emperor, who had heard much of Bishop Valentinus summoned him and immediately liked him when they met.  He was offered his freedom if he would revert to the old Roman religion but he refused to do so.  He irritated the Emperor when he tried to convert him to Christianity.  The Emperor upheld his death sentence and he was bludgeoned to death on February 14, 269 A.D.  On the evening before his execution, he wrote Julia a farewell note ending with “Your Valentine”, words which were perpetuated to today in all Valentine’s Day correspondence.  On February 14, 496 A.D. Pope Gelasius had him canonized as a Saint which thereafter became the Saint’s Feast Day.

Though most of the celebrants of Lupercalia had become Christian, the old un-Christian activities of the Festival continued.  The Church, therefore, Christianised the Festival by omitting its non-Christian aspects but maintaining its strong insistence on marriage and raising families and fusing it into St Valentine’s Day, February 14.  And for centuries thereafter, St Valentine’s Day was celebrated as a day when the virtues of marital love and marriage were promoted.

In the Middle Ages, European populations were small and even declining since the ravages of the Black Death Pandemic had not completely disappeared.  St Valentine’s Day was seriously commemorated because of its important social implications in maintaining populations.  By the 18th century, however, the world, beginning with Europe, began to experience the Medical and Sanitary Revolutions which resulted in the Population Explosion – death rates fell, infant mortality was greatly reduced and people began to live much longer.  Large and growing populations were regarded as an undesirable burden, symptoms of which could be seen in the world refugee problem.

The population explosion however, seems to be running its course and many countries in the world, especially the developed ones, are beginning to have aged and stable populations, and some have declining populations;   among these are Japan, several countries of Western Europe, and recently, China.

St Valentine’s Day, whose core meaning is the perpetuation of families and increasing populations, is again regaining its relevance and importance. It is expected that its present celebratory being will coexist with its more serious societal aims.  Indeed, its celebratory aspects allow it to be fully adopted in a multi-religious, multicultural society.