{"id":94115,"date":"2025-02-12T15:35:17","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T13:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aleksawn.bget.ru\/pochemu-my-prazdnuem-den-svyatogo-valentina-14-fevralya\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T13:27:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T10:27:05","slug":"why-do-we-celebrate-valentines-day-on-february-14th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/pochemu-my-prazdnuem-den-svyatogo-valentina-14-fevralya\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do we celebrate Valentine's Day on February 14th?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year in Valentine's Day<\/a> We celebrate love by giving chocolates and red roses, and by sending cards to our loved ones.<\/p>\n

The traditions we participate in have evolved over the centuries, but the date has always remained the same.<\/p>\n

This holiday of love has much more ancient roots than you might think, and is shrouded in mystery!<\/p>\n

We all know that Valentine's Day<\/a> \u2014 it's a day of love and camaraderie, but why do we celebrate love in February?<\/p>\n

Who was Saint Valentine?<\/h2>\n

There are many stories of martyrs and saints named Valentine, mostly between 269 and 273 AD in Rome.<\/p>\n

However, they all generally follow the same path, so it is difficult for historians to say whether it was one person or several.<\/p>\n

Two stories are particularly compelling and almost identical. One concerns a Roman priest, the other the Bishop of Terni.<\/p>\n

They were both imprisoned in a nobleman's house for conducting secret weddings and were then executed on February 14.<\/p>\n

The main difference between them is in the miracles, since the Bishop of Terni did not perform any.<\/p>\n

A Roman priest befriended a nobleman's blind daughter while he was imprisoned and cured her of her blindness. Before his execution, he left her a note signed "Your Valentine.".<\/p>\n

Because of the mythical nature of the stories, it is difficult to know whether they are all about the same person or whether these people even existed.<\/p>\n

Like most Christian literature, this event was written down long after it was said to have occurred.<\/p>\n

Why do we celebrate Valentine's Day at all and why on the fourteenth?<\/h2>\n

Long before Valentine's Day became a romantic holiday, it was a Christian holiday.<\/p>\n

This solemn holiday was dedicated to the martyrs who died on February 14. The first such celebration of Valentine's Day was held by Pope Gelasius I in 496 AD.<\/p>\n

Nearly a thousand years later, in 1382, the poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a poem called "The Parliament of Fowls." This poem is the first recorded instance of the romantic nature of Valentine's Day.<\/p>\n

In his poem, Chaucer wrote, "It was on St. Valentine's Day, When every bird comes hither to choose his mate," referring to the spring when birds in England begin to mate.<\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter, in 1400, at Mantes-la-Jolie, Charles VI of France wrote the Charter of the Court of Love.<\/p>\n

The charter stated that an annual festival would be held, poetry and music would be performed, and women would settle love disputes at the royal court.<\/p>\n

Since then, writers like Shakespeare wrote about Valentine's Day in connection with love and romance, and people began to celebrate February 14th as the day of love.<\/p>\n

Their works are mainly dedicated to the mating season in spring - especially romantic<\/em> time for animals of all kinds.<\/p>\n

Was Valentine's Day a reimagined pagan holiday?<\/h2>\n

Long before the Feast of St. Valentine began in Rome, the Romans celebrated another holiday, Lupercalia, which fell between February 13 and 15. .<\/p>\n

Some historians claim that Pope Gelasius I created the feast of St. Valentine to replace this day, although not everyone agrees.<\/p>\n

Lupercalia was a fertility festival in honor of Pan and Juno, the pagan gods of love, marriage, and fertility. The festival began with the sacrifice of a goat by priests called luperks<\/em> .<\/p>\n

The goat skin was then cut into strips and Luperci<\/em> They beat women with them, supposedly to help them become more fertile. But it wasn't at all cruel, and the women seemed to welcome the whips.<\/p>\n

Although Pope Gelasius I banned the holiday and introduced the celebration of Valentine's Day around the same time, there is no other evidence that Valentine's Day replaced it.<\/p>\n

So, Valentine's Day can simply be celebrated on February 14th to prevent pagans from honoring their gods!<\/p>\n

What do Cupid and red roses have to do with Valentine's Day?<\/h2>\n

In Greek mythology, there are two stories about the origin of the red rose. One says that the red rose was created when the goddess Aphrodite scratched herself on a white rose, turning it red.<\/p>\n

In a more romantic story, Adonis, Aphrodite's lover, is wounded by a boar while hunting.<\/p>\n

While he was wounded and bleeding, Aphrodite began to cry, and from the mixture of her tears and his blood, red roses grew.<\/p>\n

Although Cupid is a Roman deity, he was originally a Greek deity named Eros. In early Greek mythology, Eros is depicted in his late teens, very handsome and masculine.<\/p>\n

He is also said to be more powerful than any of the gods, as he can make anyone fall in love.<\/p>\n

Eventually, Eros began to seem too powerful, and stories about Eros began to focus more on him following his mother's will.<\/p>\n

By the time the Romans captured Eros and turned him into Cupid, he was already a harmless little boy.<\/p>\n

During the Renaissance, artists like Caravaggio were obsessed with these symbols of love. Later, greeting card companies like Hallmark followed suit, and the symbolism persists to this day.<\/p>\n

\n
    \n
  • Whether you're still in love with your high school sweetheart or have been married to the love of your life for years, Valentine's Day is an important day.<\/li>\n
  • The most religious among us will celebrate the sacrifice of the saint who wanted to marry couples, even though it put him at great risk.<\/li>\n
  • Saint Valentine was unfortunately executed on the 14th, and that's the real reason we celebrate Valentine's Day on this day!<\/li>\n
  • No matter how you spend this day, one thing is for sure: on February 14th, birds in the Northern Hemisphere will start singing to each other, and poets will find it very romantic!<\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Every year on Valentine's Day, we celebrate love by giving chocolates and red roses, and sending cards to our loved ones. The traditions we participate in\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":94116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesnye-fakty","hvn-theme-has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137930,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94115\/revisions\/137930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}