QuickCheck: Was Valentine's Day invented by greeting card companies?

AS ALLUDED to by Jim Carrey's character, Joel, in the 2004 movie "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind", Valentine's Day only exists to sell greeting cards.

Is this true?

Verdict:

FALSE

People have been sending gifts to each other on Valentine's Day long before the commercialisation of greeting cards became a thing.

The tradition of giving gifts and handmade cards on Feb 14 was first popularised by the Victorians but really took off when postal infrastructure was improved in the mid-19th century.

At only one penny a letter, the Victorians found it affordable to send each other anonymous notes, both living and risqué, to each other.

Noticing a gap in the market, Cadbury capitalised on the tradition by coming up with the idea of putting chocolates in a heart-shaped box in 1868.

Hallmark was a little bit late to the party but they came up with the first mass-produced Valentine's Day Card in 1910.

The day itself gets its name from the feast day of St Valentine, which is celebrated by many Christian denominations but was removed from the Catholic calendar in 1969 for the following reason: "Though the memorial of Saint Valentine is ancient, it is left to particular calendars, since, apart from his name, nothing is known of Saint Valentine except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on Feb 14."

So why Feb 14 is so special, historically that is, is actually a bit of a mystery.

Going back further in time, the Roman festival of Lupercalia was celebrated from Feb 13 to 15.

The aim of the festival was to purify Rome as well as promote health and fertility.

The actual specifics of the festival is rather gory, part of it involved priests dressed in wolfskins, the luperci, 'whipping' revellers with the skins of recently sacrificed animals.

Young married women would line the streets hoping to be whipped as it was said that it would make it easier for them to conceive.

As a side note, February gets its name from the festival as Februa means purify or purge in Latin.

References:

1. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/victorian-literature-and-culture/article/valentines-and-the-victorian-imagination-mary-barton-and-far-from-the-madding-crowd/1E2F59F81309DDCE3E02F5A011EA776B

2. https://ideas.hallmark.com/articles/valentines-day-ideas/history-of-valentines-day/

3. https://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/133693152/the-dark-origins-of-valentines-day

4. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Lupercalia