Well, St. Valentine’s day is almost upon us again. Yes, it’s time for chocolates, candies and mushy poetry. Cupid string up that bow because spring is just around the corner and we are all ready to fall in love! (Can you believe that I’m not being sarcastic?) What a crazy time of year spring is and Valentine’s Day starts it all off.

But did you ever wonder how and when this holiday got started? I did, so I went to Founders Memorial Library this morning and got the scoop. What I found out were some very interesting facts. For instance, would you ever have guessed that some of the origins of this holiday have to do with the love-life of birds, a lottery for sweethearts and the martyr death of a bishop? Well it does, and here is how they all connect

First let’s deal with the birds. In the book How Did it Begin? it tells us that mid-February was customarily known as the season birds started mating and that this was connected with the idea of love. So when we say that love is for the birds maybe we’re not all wrong.

Another book I found was Days and Customs of all Faiths. In there I found out that celebration of Valentine’s Day goes way back to the days of ancient Rome. Actually it was not originally called Valentine’s Day, back then it was known as the pagan festival of Lupercalia.

Finding this out I thought to myself, “Well, of course, all the good holidays we Catholics have were once pagan feasts for festivals. Look at Christmas. Look at Easter.” But back to our story.

Lupercalia was connected with the Roman goddess Juno and its ceremony called for a type of lottery for love to be taken. Girls’ names would be put into a drum and then boys would pick out one name each, the numbers were always even, and for the year the paired boy and girl would be sweethearts until the next Lupercalia. This puts a new light on the phrase lucky in love.

When Christianity came around it took this love holiday and like many of the other pagan holidays that it encountered, the Church just gave it a new name and kept the good times. The day of Feb. 14 was assigned to the martyr Valentine, Bishop of Terni, who had been clubbed to death and then beheaded on that day in 270 A.D.

There are a few different stories on why he had been killed. The version that goes most with our concept of Valentine’s Day says that Valentine had been performing secret marriages for young people during a time when the Roman Emperor Claudius had decided to abolish that institution. It was his commitment to marriage that he came to be called the patron saint of lovers. So for all you lovers out there, it might be cupid that first hits your heart, but it’s St. Valentine that watches over you until you’re married.

Okay, so now we know where this love theme comes from, but there is a lot more to St. Valentine’s Day than being in love. The thing that makes this holiday is the myriad of sappy and soggy ways people find to express their love for their significant others. There’s everything from poems, ballads and cards, to stuffed animals, lingerie and skywriting.

As for the practice of sending Valentine cards, it was stated that it became popular to send gifts and cards to one’s sweetheart after the introduction of cheap postal rates.

Aside from learning its origins, I also looked up how some different countries around the world celebrate love on this day. In Germany, Austria and Spain the overriding custom is the sending of flowers. The Danish exchange pressed snowdrops and humorous messages which are not signed but have a line of dots. It is their practice that if the person receiving the message guesses the person who sent the card, by counting the dots, then they send that person a candy egg for Easter. And in Japan girls give special candies to boys who have no sweetheart to send them a gift.

Well that’s all the lovely St. Valentine’s trivia I have for you today, so to all you lovers out there have a great weekend. May cupid, Juno, St. Valentine and the birds be on your side.