The colour red is highly associated with Valentine’s Day – the roses, the hearts and the teddy bears donning scarlet. However, the colour red might be associated to the holiday in a far gorier and bloodier fashion as the holiday has a history of beheadings, martyrdom and power-hungry emperors.

Valentine’s Day is a celebration of Saint Valentine, a martyr within the Catholic Church. However, Saint Valentine might have been one of three  Valentines, all of whom died under Emperor Claudius II.The first one was allegedly a romantic and rebellious priest who went against the emperor’s order to ban soldiers from marrying as Claudius believed that single men made better troops.

This Valentine married them in secret, leading to his beheading upon being caught. The second Valentine was also beheaded, with the third being arrested for helping Christians escape Roman prisons.Due to a lack of historical records, it is difficult to tell whether Saint Valentine was one or all three of these men. As with legends and other such events, the Valentines were moulded into one celebration. 

Some have suggested the holiday is there to commemorate the saint’s death but others have argued that it is a replacement for the festival Lupercalia. This was a Roman fertility festival, in which which priests would gather at a cave where the founders of Rome, Remus and Romolus, were said to have been raised by a wolf. 

Here animal sacrifices- possibly of goats and dogs – were allegedly carried out, followed by some bizarre rituals carried out to increase fertility. Again, take all this with a grain of salt. Today, the holiday is estimated to cost people around £40 on average on Valentine’s day. It was found that around one in ten people claim to buy their partners flowers, but let’s be honest – that’s better than sacrificing a goat for them. 

#MaltaDaily