Let’s start at the very beginning with the very unromantic origins of Valentine’s Day. The beheading part of our title.
Look at our lovely kneeling St. Valentine. This is just one of the many Valentines that lived, pictured here in St Valentine Kneeling in Supplication by David Teniers III from the 1600s.
There were actually a lot of people named Valentine roaming around the Roman era. It was a really popular name. This very well sourced Wikipedia article will tell you all about the many Valentines, the origin of the name, the main St. Valentines that we were talking about in this episode, and a lot more that I didn’t talk about in our episode.
This link will talk to you about Lupercalia and the pagan festival people speculate the Pope was trying to replace with Valentine’s Day.
Now what about Cupid? We’ve got the origin of the holiday but how did the Greek god Eros / Roman god Cupid get mixed up in it?
This one is great for answering questions you might not have thought about like “why does Cupid have wings” and “why is he a baby” and “how has he been portrayed in the media” so definitely give this one a look. If for nothing else, look at this one for the century old Valentine’s Cards.
This is one of the stories of Cupid and Psyche. There are many variations of this story. I told one on the podcast, and this is a different one, so enjoy it!
Enjoy these 10 funky little vintage Valentine cards. They range in date from the mid-Victorian period up to the 1920s. At these following two buttons I’ll link the online antique store where I found the images of several of these at. The second button is just a massive gallery on Getty Images of vintage Valentine cards because I love old weird cards for some reason and I want to share them.
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