VALENTINE’S Day was celebrated this week on Wednesday with many getting beautiful gifts from loved ones.
If it wasn’t the candlelit dinner, it could have been a beautiful dress, a card, a teddy bear or flowers.
Those without loved ones or who did not receive gifts felt a little bit or a lot out of place as friends and colleagues displayed ‘tokens of love’.
Be that as it may, just a few of us know the origins of the day even though we are so engrossed in it.
St Valentine’s Day, commonly shortened to Valentine’s Day, is a day observed on February 14 honouring one or more early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine.
Some people state that it originated from St Valentine, a Roman killed for refusing to give up Christianity on February 14 269 AD.
Legend has it that St Valentine left a farewell note for the jailer’s daughter, who had become his friend, and signed it ‘From Your Valentine’.
Other aspects of the story say that St Valentine served as a priest at the temple during the reign of Emperor Claudius.
Claudius then had Valentine jailed for defying him.
In 496 AD, Pope Gelasius set aside February 14 to honour St Valentine although it was later deleted from the General Roman Calendar of saints in 1969 by Pope Paul VI.
But there is a darker version of the origins of Valentine’s Day.
Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia from February 13 to 15.
The men sacrificed a goat, a dog and then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain.
It said, assisted by Vestal Virgins, the Luperci (male priests) conducted purification rites by sacrificing goats and a dog in the Lupercal Cave on Palatine Hill, where the Romans believed the twins Romulus and Remus had been sheltered and nursed by a she-wolf before they eventually founded Rome.
Clothed in loincloths made from sacrificed goats and smeared in their blood, the Luperci would run about Rome, striking women with ‘februa’, thongs made from skins of the sacrificed goats.
The Luperci believed that the floggings purified women and guaranteed their fertility and ease of childbirth. 
February derives from februa or ‘means of purification’.
To the Romans, February was also sacred to Juno Februata, the goddess of febris ‘fever’ of love, and of women and marriage.
On February 14, billets (small pieces of paper, each of which had the name of a teenage girl written on it) were put into a container.
Teenage boys would then choose one billet at random.
The boy and the girl whose name was drawn would become a ‘couple’, joining in erotic games at feasts and parties celebrated throughout Rome.
After the festival, they would remain sexual partners for the rest of the year.
This custom was observed in the Roman Empire for centuries.
Also among the various Greco-Roman pagan rituals was the Roman primaeval rite of ‘Februa’, said to be a ‘spring-cleaning’ ritual held during ‘Februarius’, the name for the month of February, known today as ‘Febbraio’ in Italian.
According to Dr Tony Monda, the Februa ceremony was conducted to prevent evil spirits, purify the communities of the city of Rome and promote health and fertility; no doubt, much like the Korekore practice of ‘kuchenesa masango’, the cleaning of the forests in preparation of the on-coming rains.
In time, this pre-Roman pastoral ritual was superseded by the ceremony of ‘Lupercalia’ which came to be observed annually on February 15.
In ancient Greek mythology, the name Lupercalia was connected with the worship of Lycaean Pan, assumed to be a Greek equivalent to the Roman deity Faunus.
In Roman mythology, ‘Lupercus’ is the deity of shepherds.
The pagan celebration of Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture.
Although the Lupercalia survived the rise of Christianity, it was later outlawed by Pope Gelasius I at the end of the 5th Century as it was deemed ‘un-Christian’.
The Roman pagan ritual of ‘Saturnalia’ also celebrated on this day is well-described by Dan Brown in his novel Da Vinci’s Code, whereby the Vestal Virgins are raped as part of the ceremony.
It is also said that the Roman Emperor Claudius II, claiming that bachelors made better soldiers, is alleged to have prohibited marriage for young men to prevent them from avoiding the draft by marrying.
Emperor Claudius II executed two men both named Valentine on February 14 of different years in the 3rd Century AD.
Their martyrdom was honoured by the Catholic Church with the celebration of St Valentine’s Day.
It was only during Geoffrey Chaucer’s times in the High Middle Ages that the day first became associated with romantic love.
By the 15th Century, it had evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery and sending greeting cards (known as ‘Valentines’).
The tradition has cascaded down to all the countries in the world, including ours as seen by many of us found buying various gifts.