Valentine’s Day is a holiday that I’m sure you’re familiar with. It’s supposed to be about celebrating love but is that really all there is to it? 

It started off as most holidays do: as pagan festivals. Interestingly, it’s believed that around the same time as modern Valentine’s Day, there was a Roman festival called Lupercalia, which celebrated spring, fertility, Romulus and Remus and the Roman God of agriculture. It was then renamed after Saint Valentine. According to legend, there was more than one Saint Valentine, but my personal favourite is the story about how when Emperor Claudius II out-lawed marriage for young men because he thought single men made better soldiers, a young man by the name of Valentine decided this was wrong and helped young couples get married in secret. Eventually, he was discovered and thrown into prison, where he went on to fall in love with the jailer’s daughter, Allegedly, he wrote her a letter before he was executed signed “From your Valentine”. I find it amazing that this is a phrase still used today; I wonder if Saint Valentine knew he was starting off something that would last centuries after he would.  

Today, Valentine’s Day is strongly associated with chocolate, roses and other gifts to show someone (typically your significant other, but not always) how much they mean to you, but has it got to the point where it’s more about the gifts than the people they’re being bought for. Statistics also show that people tend to spend a shocking amount on Valentine’s Day. 

 Numerous people find themselves wanting to be in relationships on this day. But why? On Valentine’s Day and around it, corporations advertise more, as they would on every holiday, and so the societal pressure of getting into a relationship are increased dramatically. Ads about Valentine's Day become more prominent in products geared towards women and they employ a range of techniques –including making people feel bad about themselves- to drill in how important it is that they have someone to buy gifts for them. 

Moreover, it can feel like the day is less about the celebration of love but more about proving that love through spending money. It’s a similar problem to Christmas- both are examples of once pagan festivals that are said to celebrate love, but overtime have become increasingly focused on the exchange of material gifts.  

One such material gift that’s exchanged is chocolate and it’s become a staple of this day and romance in general but where did this custom come from. Apparently, the first person to make a chocolate box was Richard Cadbury in the 1840s and he decorated them so they could be used to store things after the chocolate had been eaten. Since then, chocolate has been associated with romance. 

In conclusion, Valentine’s Day started off as a pagan festival celebrating fertility, then became a day to remember a Christian Saint and celebrate love to a day where people buy gifts to give to their lovers. As a hopeless romantic myself, I have no problem with people expressing their dedication to each other, but I do have a problem with corporations exploiting people for profit.