Valentine’s Day is known to be a holiday about love. Despite being mostly commercialized into a
romantic holiday, Valentine’s Day is a wonderful holiday to celebrate all different kinds of love.
But would you believe me if I told you that this candy-coated, pink-adorned day of February is
actually celebrating a man’s death?

The origins of Christian holidays tend to be a bit morbid at times; Easter isn’t celebrating
bunnies or eggs, but the day the Christian Bible claims to be the same day of the resurrection of
Jesus Christ. However, that was his resurrection——Valentine’s Day, on the flip side, celebrates
the very day of his death, February 14th.

Valentine’s Day isn’t only named after one Saint Valentine; in fact, there are three men who
went by the name of Valentine who are gravely connected to February 14th. The first was a
Roman priest who was martyred on the Via Flaminia, the second a bishop of Interamna who
was buried in the same place. The third wasn’t martyred on the 14th of February, but he was
said to be a saint who suffered on that day.

Be it coincidence or fate, the former two examples were martyred on the Via Flaminia on
February 14th, and they were both named Valentine. The bishop from Italy didn’t even live in
Rome; he was born and raised in Interamna, and was imprisoned and then executed while
visiting Rome for either a religious mission or a vacation.

The legend of Saint Valentine describes a man called Valentinus, who was put under house
arrest for evangelizing. Valentinus was religious, and told the judge that he was a humble
servant of Jesus, therefore he wouldn’t commit a crime. The judge, Asterius, presented his
adopted daughter, who happened to be blind, and told Valentinus that if he could restore her
sight, he would be freed. Valentinus touched the girl’s hand, and according to the legend, the girl
could then see.

Keeping his promise, the judge let Valentinus free, destroyed the idols in his home, fasted for
three days, and was baptized. In the time this happened, Valentinus fell in love with the blind girl
he cured. She was converted along with her father and forty-nine others.

With Valentinus’s newfound freedom, he travelled to Rome to evangelize Claudius Gothicus, the
emperor. Enraged by Valentinus and his arrogance, Emperor Claudius demanded that
Valentinus either convert and give up Christianity or be condemned. Valentinus refused to give
up his religion, and so he was sent to be martyred outside the gates of Flaminia. Before
Valentinus died, he sent a note to Asterius’s daughter saying the phrase “from your Valentine”, inspiring the modern tradition.

From now on, when you spend time with the people you love (romantically or otherwise) on
February 14th, remember the dark history of this pinkish holiday. Be it truth or simply a grim
legend, one cannot deny the irony of the correlation between Valentine’s Day and the tale that
inspired it.