On February 9, 1908, the New York Times reflected upon the ambiguous origins of St. Valentine’s Day. According to the Times, the “mists of antiquity” obscured the real origins of the custom, along with the confusing reality that there were at least four historical figures with the name Saint Valentine - two bishops, a “Virgin martyr” and a Tyrolean saint.

There is, however, enough evidence according to this account to assert that one St. Valentine, a Roman bishop, was born on February 14 of an unspecified year, and died in 278 A.D. According to legend, he cured a young child of her blindness, and in counter-intuitive response to his miracle-working, was subsequently “beaten with clubs and then beheaded.”

Another bishop by the name of Valentine, who is also reported to have performed an astonishing miracle – this time, curing a young boy of epilepsy, died by “choking on a fishbone.” It is unclear whether or not his death was accidental. Until at least 1908, and presumably until today, many people in Greece and Italy still pray to this particular Valentine for a cure for epilepsy.

The next Valentine was St. Valentine of Tyrol, who died in the fourth century C.E. According to this account, he was a “beautiful youth attired in the dress of a Roman soldier” and who preached Christianity to the savage Lombards. It seems as if this particular Valentine had more to do with crafting the modern legend, for it was he who, after performing yet another miracle, this time by escaping the collapse of the Tyrolean temple unscathed, went on to perform the first Christian marriage ceremony in Tyrol.

It is also possible that the traditional Roman feast of Lupercalia, which took place during February. The festival’s primary event was the “drawing by lot the names of young women by the young men.” As time went on, and as the empire Christianized, clergy placed the names of saints on the slips of paper instead of the names of people in an attempt to sacralize the custom. Because the event occurred on February 14, the birthday of the Roman St. Valentine, it was christened “St. Valentine’s Day.” Presumably, as the empire spread westward, the custom migrated along with it, eventually working its way into the culture of Britain, where in 1721, young men and women met on the eve of Valentine’s Day to “inscribe (each other’s) names upon slips of paper.” The far-reaching British colonial empire undoubtedly spread the custom across the Atlantic; indeed, around the world.

Whatever the origins of the day, it is clear that by 1908, a vast industry had established itself by marketing paper valentines in “astonishing, not to say alarming, proportions.” The Times reflected that the “comic valentine, that hideous and dreadful creation, is presumably one of the evils resulting from the custom (of professing love on Valentine’s Day).” Twentieth-century mass culture reinforced the commercial value of the “holiday,” turning Valentine’s Day into a cash cow for greeting card companies.