Most people think Valentine’s Day was invented by Hallmark Cards. It wasn’t. Valentine’s Day is actually a well-documented, historical phenomenon — its tangled roots winding their way through centuries worth of Christian liturgy, pagan tradition, myth, and an occasional beheading.
The most popular account of its origins date back to a temple priest named, not surprisingly, Valentine, a later-to-be-canonized saint who was executed in 270 A.D. by Emperor Claudius II for performing illegal marriage ceremonies on the Roman battlefield. Back then, as the story goes, the military-minded Claudius believed connubial bliss was bad for war and made it illegal for soldiers to wed.
