Valentine’s Day today is synonymous with a single idea — love. But the Feb. 14 holiday’s origins are not quite so cut-and-dried.

Highline history professor Rachael Bledsaw says historians have several theories as to how the holiday got its start.

“Truthfully? We’re not entirely sure,” she said. “By the time someone decided to investigate why the Western world suddenly went love crazy in the middle of February, there were a few different options to pick from as far as its start.”

What links have been made, Bledsaw said, are to various traditions of the Roman Empire and Catholic Church. But even to the question of Saint Valentine’s identity, historians don’t have a sure answer.

“St. Valentine’s Day is obviously linked to a St. Valentine, but the Catholic Church gave us three to pick from, all roughly around the same time,” Bledsaw said.

To muddle things even further, all three Valentines were made saints for the same reason — they were all martyrs. Each one’s martyrdom, however, was achieved under its own unique circumstance.

“One was executed by the emperor for performing secret marriages,” Bledsaw said.

“Around the time of Claudius II the Roman Empire decided that young, single men were better soldiers than those with wives and children,” she said. “Therefore, marriage for young men was banned. This St. Valentine said, effectively, ‘That’s stupid,’ and went on performing marriages anyway.”

Another Valentine, whose connection to the holiday is less clear, Bledsaw said, was similarly executed in the Roman Empire, this time by beheading.

But the most romantic explanation by far lies in the story of the third Valentine.

“The third St. Valentine supposedly helped Christians in a particular prison escape until he himself was caught and imprisoned,” Bledsaw said. “Before Roman conversion, Christians were imprisoned and tortured, and were killed as entertainment for Romans.”

“While imprisoned, he was visited often by a young woman he wrote to. Who the lucky girl was is unknown, but romantic speculation says it was the jailor’s own daughter,” she said. “In his last letter to her, he signed it, ‘your Valentine,’ before he was executed in 270 CE.” 

What’s clearer about the history of Valentine’s Day, Bledsaw said, is where it got its date.

Around the Ides of February, the date corresponding to the middle of each month in the Roman calendar, the Romans celebrated the holiday Lupercalia — a festival of, among other things, fertility.

Bledsaw said the mid-February Lupercalia celebration likely influenced what would come to replace it in Valentine’s Day. Though some of the festival’s traditions seem to have been, thankfully, left behind.

“Priests took a dog and goat up to a specific cave and sacrificed both. After the sacrifice, the goat was skinned into strips and the strips were soaked in blood,” Bledsaw said.

“Once the strips were soaked in blood the priests went back to wander the streets of the city which were just filled with single women screaming at them like they were some kind of rock stars and begging to be hit with the bloody strips,” she said. “Why? Because it increased fertility, or so they believed.”

Other, less sanguinary aspects of the festival seem to have had a more direct, lasting influence on the romance-focused Valentine’s Day celebrated today.

“The last part of the celebration was that names of all the single, of-age men and women were put in urns and randomly put together,” Bledsaw said. “They were supposed to be companions for that year — there’s credible evidence that many of these matches ended with marriages.”

Eventually, however, the Catholic Church would come to ban celebration of Lupercalia after the Roman Empire’s adoption of Christianity.

But the Church’s success at stopping the celebration was likely limited on a large scale, Bledsaw said. So, as was done with holidays such as Halloween and Christmas, the Catholic Church adopted Lupercalia’s date and themes.

“Instead of a fertility festival, it was a festival about love that would hopefully lead to marriage, not fornication,” Bledsaw said.

As time went on, Valentine’s Day continued to be celebrated in the Western world as a time for card and gift-giving and appreciative celebration between lovers. The holiday’s next evolution, Bledsaw said, came about during the Victorian Era in Great Britain.

“It was the Victorians that made the holiday into the saccharine-soaked nightmare for single people it has become,” she said. “For some reason, Victorians were in love with love.”

Bledsaw said the example set by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in the mid-1800s, coupled with economic growth throughout the West likely played large parts in contributing to Valentine’s Day’s lovey-dovey explosion during this time.

“Maybe it was because of the very obvious passionate love match between Albert and Victoria. Maybe it was because economic changes allowed marriage to be less a business deal and more a symbol of love and devotion,” she said.

This influence wasn’t limited to Britain. Despite the continental gap, it spilled over to the United States and saw Valentine’s Day’s proliferation throughout American society.

“The U.S., while still not crazy about monarchy and aristocracy, loved Victoria and Albert,” Bledsaw said. “The economy was growing as well, allowing for more people to have the extra income to buy gifts and have the leisure time to spend with their significant others.”

“Historically speaking, love and money are very linked. Where there is a lot of it, love can thrive. Where there is less of it, love is a waste,” she said.

Through all its evolution and iterations, love has remained a part of Valentine’s Day, but not at all in the same form.

“In one way or another, the holiday was always linked with love, but what changed was the varying ideas of the point and purpose of love,” Bledsaw said.

Bledsaw says that that means, romantic partner or no, there can be something in the holiday for everyone.

“So, the good news is, there really isn’t a wrong way to celebrate Valentine’s Day,” Bledsaw said. “We assume that Valentine’s Day means romantic love, but there is no reason it has to stay that way, or even really has all that much support for that belief in its murky origins.”

“In fact, in Japan Valentine’s Day isn’t a romantic love holiday, it’s a day to exchange chocolate or small gifts with your friends as a way of saying, ‘Thank you for being in my life,’” she said. “And who doesn’t want to hear that someone wants them in their life?”