Like most of our holidays and festival days, the roots of Valentine’s Day lie deep in the ancient pagan era. And so do we all. After all, every one of us descends from these ancient ancestors, so we come by our fun-loving, often hedonistic impulses naturally. We love our holidays and festivals, with good eats and drinks and music and dance. We love our chocolate and our wine.

Instead of hiding out from our Inner Pagan, we should treasure it, nurture it and let loose on those holidays that celebrate it.

This Valentine’s Day, get out and enjoy your wine, women and song, or wine, men and song, depending on gender…. And don’t forget the chocolate!

Ancient Rome, long before the days of the Roman Empire, consisted of shepherds and their flocks living on and around the Palatine Hill, surrounded by packs of wolves that roamed the surrounding wilderness. Among their many gods, the Romans had a wolf named Lupercus who watched over the shepherds and their flocks, and it was in his honor that the Romans held a great feast in February called the Lupercalia. February came later in their calendar than it does now, so the festival celebrated spring as well.

The young men ran through the streets with goatskin thongs. Young women swarmed into the street in hopes of being lashed with the thongs they believed would make them more fertile. (Presumably, the lashings of the soft goatskin were more playful than painful!) The thongs were called the februa and the lashing the februatio, both coming from a Latin word meaning to purify. Hence, the name of the month, February.

Another ritual came a bit later (scholars are vague about exactly how early all of these were practiced, but they were many years B.C.). A lottery was held and young men would draw the names of girls. The girl assigned to each young swain would be his during the remaining year.

Pope Gelasius (492-496) ordered a change in the lottery. Instead of the names of girls, both the young men and the women were to draw the names of saints, who they were then to emulate for the rest of the year. Needless to say, no one, least of all the men, was thrilled about this.

Then the Church decided to replace the pagan god, Lupercus, and made St. Valentine the patron saint of love.

Valentine had been ordered beheaded by Claudius, who thought that married men made lousy soldiers and banned marriage. But Valentine secretly married the young men who came to him. He was first imprisoned, and during his time in prison, he fell in love with the blind daughter of the jailer. His love for her and his great faith miraculously healed her blindness. Before Valentine was killed, he signed a farewell message to her, “from your Valentine.” The phrase has been used ever since.

Charles, Duke of Orleans, is said to have sent the first real Valentine card to his wife in 1415, when he was imprisoned in the Tower of London.

In time, Cupid, the son of Venus, the Roman god of love and beauty, became another pagan symbol of Valentine’s Day and so the pagan symbols continue today.