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Join God Honest Truth as we uncover the origins and meaning of Valentine’s Day through the lens of Scripture and history. Discover how this widely celebrated day evolved from ancient traditions to the modern celebration we know today. Article Post: https://godhonesttruth.com/wp/2025/01/31/valentines-day-god-honest-truth-live-stream-01-31-2025/
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Join God Honest Truth as we uncover the origins and meaning of Valentine’s Day through the lens of Scripture and history. Discover how this widely celebrated day evolved from ancient traditions to the modern celebration we know today. Article Post: https://godhonesttruth.com/wp/2025/01/31/valentines-day-god-honest-truth-live-stream-01-31-2025/
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Valentine's Day has a complex history. It originated from the festival of Lupercalia, a Roman festival of lust and carnality. During Lupercalia, men and women would be randomly paired up and engage in certain rituals. The festival was eventually banned by Pope Galatius in 494. Saint Valentine, who disobeyed the emperor's ban on marriages and continued to marry people in secret, was eventually found out and executed on February 14th. There were multiple Valentines who were martyred, but the exact details are unclear. The name Valentine became associated with love and romance over time. Valentine's Day. Love it. Hate it. Celebrate it. Don't celebrate it. But I'm pretty sure you know what it is, when it occurs, and when you get to thinking about it, where did Valentine's Day come from? Where did its origins and what about all these various things associated with it? That's what we're going to be discussing and exploring in this teaching from God on Truth on Valentine's Day. So this teaching is going to be all about Valentine's Day and coming from a Messianic perspective. We're going to examine the history behind it, see whether or not it lines up with scripture, whether or not we may celebrate it. So make sure to stay tuned for this drosh. Make sure to have your notes out and ready. And if you happen to miss anything, make sure to go check out the article post on Godhonesttruth.com. Click on the post there for Valentine's Day. And on the post, you'll be able to see the on-demand video, which you see here. You'll also be able to see the drosh slide that you see up in front of you now. You'll get the notes that we took for this episode, as well as the transcript, if that's of any help to you. Go check it out on Godhonesttruth.com or go down below and we have conveniently located a link directly to that post down in the description below this video or down below where you click on play in the audio podcast platform. Like I said, this is going to be about Valentine's Day, where it came from, and giving you a messianic perspective and just a little information to make a better decision in your life as to whether or not you should or should not celebrate it. But starting out, let's go ahead and get a little bit of Roman history out of the way, just to give you a background of where we're going with this, or at least a background of where we're going with some of the information here. According to the legend, there were two twin boys named Romulus and Remus. Now, for the rest of you Trekkies out there, that probably sounds fairly familiar. This is probably where Gene Roddenberry got the names for the planets Romulus and Remus. Anyways, when they were very young, there was a king named Amulius and he saw them as a threat to his throne. So what does he do? He leaves them to die and he left them to die in the Tiber River. So he thought they were going to drown, he'd be done with people who were a threat to his throne, and it didn't happen that way, at least according to legend. The boys Romulus and Remus were saved by a she-wolf, and the wolf's name was Lupa. Remember that name, it's going to become very prominent here real quick. Anyways, this she-wolf Lupa cared for them, raised them, protected them until they could get to an older age. Now, back in the day, this word Lupa, or she-wolf, was actually a slang term for a prostitute. And some historians actually believe that Romulus and Remus' mother may have been a harlot early on in her life and then at some point went legit. But anyways, that's a little bit of back story, but the standard mythology goes that it was an actual female wolf that cared for these two twin boys that were just cast away. When the wolf found them, she took them to a cave which was named Lupercal, and that's where she cared for and raised these boys. And eventually, they were taken care of and raised by a shepherd named Calstulus. If I'm pronouncing that correctly. But then sometime later, once they grow up, they get in their head and they decide that they're going to build or found a city, but this does not go well. They actually ended up arguing about certain details of the city. Some accounts say they argued over the name of it, some say they argued over location, but there was a dispute that came about, and as some arguments go, a surefire way to solve the argument and win is to just kill your opponent. And that's what Romulus did to his brother Remus. Romulus went and killed Remus, and then Romulus founded a city which he named Rome after his name Romulus. That's a little bit about the founding of Rome, and especially pay attention to the part about the she-wolf Lupa and the cave that she raised these boys in named Lupercal. Moving on to the festival of Lupercalia. Sound familiar? Well sure, we just went over that. Anyway, Lupercalia was celebrated annually, especially in ancient Rome, on February 15th. February 15th, remember that date. It was originally known as Februa, and goats and dogs were sacrificed during this festival by these priests of the Luper, the, whatever cult it was, they were called the Luperci, the brothers of the wolf. They were the priests of this one particular Roman cult. The sacrifices took place at the entrance of that cave called Lupercal, where mythology holds that Romulus and Remus were protected and cared for by the she-wolf. Then on the eve of Lupercalia every year, young Roman women would write their names on pieces of paper, or I guess maybe in the early days sometimes, maybe little pieces of clay, but they would put it in jars or pots, and as they did this, young Roman men would go and pick a name, and that's the person they would be paired with during this festival, and sometimes for the entire year, up until the next festival of Lupercalia. They were usually noble, those higher wealth, higher class people. They would be paired with these girls, and they would sometimes go around even whipping them with various things, especially goat hides or the hides of sacrificed animals. They would slap the women with these strips or these hides that they had, and this is all done as a rite, sort of like a belief, a myth, that it would increase and help promote fertility amongst especially the women, but sometimes also the men. The ritual was believed to make the women fertile, and some believe it actually went as far as helping with the crops every year too, but mostly it was for the people involved, especially the women. However, in 494, Pope Galatius ended up finally doing away with this festival of Lupercalia. The festival was not anything like we would think of today when it comes to love and romance. Lupercalia was more based on things like lust and carnality. You kind of get that from the whole random pairing up and sticking together for sometimes maybe a year at a time until you get paired up with someone new next year, but that pairing up involved certain things, and like we said, during this festival, these men and these women would oftentimes run around naked while slapping each other with sacrificed goat hides and dog hides, but we can see certain remnants and references to Lupercalia in various works. One comes from the guy known as Plutarch, and he writes way back in sometime between 46 and 120, but he states in his Life of Julius Caesar, quote, the Feast of the Lupercalia was being celebrated, and at this time, many of the magistrates and many young men of noble families run through the city naked, and in their jazzing and merrymaking, strike those whom they meet with shaggy thongs, and many women of high rank purposely stand in their way and hold out their hands to be struck like children at school. They believe that the effect will be to give an easy delivery to those who are pregnant and to help the barren become pregnant, end quote. Again, this whole Feast of Lupercalia was more on the lustful carnality side of things. We also see a reference to Lupercalia way up into the Middle Ages as well with none other than Shakespeare, the playwright. He mentions this Feast of Lupercalia somewhat vaguely in his play Julius Caesar, but you can see here in Act 1, Scene 2, Caesar says, forget not in your speed, Antonius, to touch Calpurnia, for our elders say the barren touched in this holy chase, shake off their feral curse. Then on in Act 1, Scene 1, Marullus states, you know it is the Feast of Lupercal. And then on in Act 3, Scene 2, Antony states, and Brutus is an honorable man, you all did see that on the Lupercal, I thrice presented him a kingly crown, which he did thrice refuse. We see references to Lupercalia from the writer Plutarch way back in the day when this whole festival of Lupercalia was actually going on. Then we see it even referenced up in the Middle Ages with Shakespeare in one of his plays. So it wasn't something that was forgotten, but eventually, not long after it got banned, it became something that was not really well known. It wasn't that many people who knew about Lupercalia. So what does all this have to do with Saint Valentine, this guy that we've all heard about who is the namesake for the day of Valentine's Day? Way back in the day, especially near the end of the 3rd century, the story goes that there was somewhere around two, maybe three Valentines who were died and maybe were sainted. But the fact of the matter is, there was actually a lot of people named Valentine back then. It was a fairly common name, but the two that we're going to be referencing are the two who the church usually points to as sources for the legend. One was a Valentine of Rome and another was Valentine of Cerny. Hippocrates II, when he was in rule and in power near the end of the 3rd century, he was engaged in several bloody and unpopular campaigns. As such, when you're waging war, you lose men and you need to replenish those men. But these wars were unpopular and with people dying and the wars not being very well liked, it was tough to get men to join the army. So Saudis banned marriages and engagements. Why did they do this? Because if you got married or if you were a newlywed, you didn't have to go to war for a certain amount of time. And in order to boost recruitment, Saudis banned marriages and engagements to kind of help out with the war effort. But this guy named Valentine supposedly disobeyed the emperor's commands and he continued marrying people in secret. So he was eventually found out and he was beaten and eventually beheaded on February 14th, about the year of 270 AD or CE, however you want to put it. So both of these people that were named Valentine that we're looking at, both of them were beheaded on February 14th and they were both executed by the emperor Saudis but on different years. In 496 AD, Pope Galatius, remember him? He established February 14th as the remembrance to Saint Valentine. So remember back in 494 AD, the Pope Galatius banned the festival of Lupercalia because it was a pagan carnal feast, not very Christian. That was in 494 AD and he replaced it with the remembrance of the purification of the mother. Then two years later in 496 AD, Valentine's Day or Saint Valentine's Day was established in remembrance of this supposed saint who did various miracles. Now there's not a lot of information, in fact there's little to nothing about the actual real information about this supposed Valentine. We know that more than likely he actually did exist but we don't know what he did and why he was even sainted in the first place. We don't know because eventually way on up in history, all the way up in 1969, the Roman Catholic Church eventually removed him from their general calendar. But from Britannica.com, quote, although the Roman Catholic Church continues to recognize Saint Valentine as a saint of the church, he was removed from the general Roman calendar in 1969 because of the lack of reliable information about him, end quote. I don't know why it took them 1700 years to come to this decision. There never was sufficient information, there never was reliable information about him but they sainted him, they named the day and the calendar after him and we have this tradition now that is going to be next to impossible to even get rid of now that we know it shouldn't have been done in the first place. But anyways he's been taken off the Roman calendar now because of a lack of reliable information finally but that's where we get the name of Saint Valentine's Day and actually where we get the date on our calendar because that's the date when this person Valentine was beheaded and since he was, for some odd reason, sainted, he got a day on the calendar and the rest is history as they say. But there's a little bit of misunderstanding that goes on when it comes to the information that we've already examined. We've examined Lupercalia, we've examined this Saint Valentine and his day that was put onto the calendar. Let's recap real quick. Lupercalia was a lustful carnal festival done by the Roman pagans. It was outlawed in 494 by a Roman Catholic Pope. Then in 496, two years later, the same Roman Catholic Pope initiated a day for the remembrance of a martyred Christian which they call Saint Valentine. But this day was not, at that point, not celebrated in any particular way except as a remembrance. Maybe the Roman Catholics prayed to the Saint Valentine but there was no festivities. There was nothing associated with romance or love or even lust or carnality. There was nothing like that back in 496 when Saint Valentine's Day was established. As we go down through the years, things change and actually the way it was in 496 when it was first established stayed pretty much that same way for well over or almost a thousand years. So this is where we're going to start examining Valentine as we understand it in today's day and age. When we look at catholic.org, the romantic nature of Valentine's Day may have derived from the Middle Ages when it was believed that birds paired couples in mid-February. In 496 AD, Pope Galatius marked February 14th as a celebration in honor of Valentine's martyrdom. And from catholiceducation.org, quote, during the medieval age, a common belief in England and France was that birds began to pair on February 14th halfway through the second month of the year. For this reason, the day was dedicated to lovers and prompted the sending of letters, gifts, or other signs of affection, end quote. And then looking at catholic.com, quote, the reason the feast day has come to be associated with romance has nothing to do with the two saints, neither of whom had a clear connection to lovers or courtship. The association has to do with a belief dating from at least the time of Chaucer that birds paired up on February 14th. This belief about biology became associated with the feast of the day and eventually the thought of courtship and romance came to dominate, end quote. So up until the Middle Ages, Valentine's Day had nothing to do with love, romance, or the like. It was just a day of remembrance for this martyred Christian. But then things changed in the Middle Ages and so at first they eventually took off and rather quickly. We hear from history.com, quote, it was a medieval poet who first established the holiday's romantic tradition. Valentine's Day only became associated with love in the late Middle Ages thanks to the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Bruce Forbes, a professor of religious studies at Morningside College in Iowa, says the bottom line for me is until Chaucer we have no evidence of people doing something special and romantic on February 14th, end quote. And that's what the exact evidence I can find. I find zero evidence to associate Valentine's Day with love, romance, or even any of the festivities of Lupercalia between 496 and the time of Chaucer when he wrote his poem. But when he wrote his poem, that was really the beginning of Valentine's Day as we know it today. Before then, it was just a remembrance of a martyred person. Anyways, it's a quote that they're referring to when it comes to Chaucer which really kicked off the association between Valentine's Day and love, romance, that kind of thing. It's from Geoffrey Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls written about 1381 or 1382. And I'll attempt to read the relevant parts of this poem for you. It says, quote, For this was on St. Valentine's Day when every fowl comes here his mate to take. Of every species that men know, I say, and then so huge a crowd did they make. So this noble empress, full of grace, made every fowl to take its proper place, as they were wont to do from year to year, on St. Valentine's Day standing there. You know that on St. Valentine's Day, by my statute and through my governance, you come to choose and then fly your way, your mates, as I your desires enhance. St. Valentine, who are full high aloft, does sing the small fowls for your sake. Now welcome summer with your song soft, that this winter's weather does all shake. End quote. So this is really the first connection between Valentine's Day and any sort of love. And here, Chaucer is making a reference between birds pairing up, or mating, and Valentine's Day. And this is where it really got kicked off and where it really started, at least the way we understand Valentine's today. Later on in another poem, Chaucer wrote in about 1385, quote, that a time cometh which shall end your sorrow, for the glad night is worth a heavy morrow. Thus sang a bird, St. Valentine, what time, thy natal day was in its early prime. End quote. If you'd like to read these poems, you can go find those in our notes that we put in the article post over on godhonesttruth.com. So that was really where the Valentine's Day that we know got its start from, way back in 1381 with Jeffrey Chaucer. But it's adapted, it's evolved, it's changed over time. It wasn't back then like we know now with all the gifts and things and symbols that we know of Valentine's today. So where did all these things come from? Where did these modern-day observances that we recognize come into play? We look at Valentine's Day cards first, and coming from botanica.com, quote, the paper Valentine with inscribed sentiment dates from the 16th century, and the first printed Valentine may have been the frontispiece of a Valentine writer, a book of verses that offered assistance to the inarticulate and was issued as early as 1669. End quote. And from altco.com, quote, it seems that the writing of special notes and letters for Valentine's Day gained widespread popularity in the 1700s. End quote. So it started out pretty early back in the 1600s, or 17th century, or how you want to put it, and then started getting more popularity in the 1700s, but it really still wasn't up to full same popularity like we know today. That came later on. From time.com, Time magazine, quote, the earliest English, French, and American Valentines were little more than a few lines of verse and written on a sheet of paper, but as of the 18th century, their makers began to embellish them with pictures as well. The first commercial Valentines appeared in England at the very end of the 18th century. End quote. So now we've got commercialized Valentines being commercially produced near the end of the 18th century. There was still a big change in society and the world to come that would change Valentines Day cards even more. In fact, it's the industrial revolution which made things a lot cheaper and quicker produced that would really make Valentines Day cards take off, and that happened in the 19th century, and that's when we really see the popularity of Valentines cards become well known and well established within the tradition of Valentines Day as a whole. But it's been going on ever since the 16th century, the 1600s. That would be the 17th century, but anyways, you get my drift. It's been going on for a long time, many hundreds of years. People have been sending Valentines Day cards in one form or another, whether it's been handwritten or commercially produced. Now some of these Valentines cards weren't the happy, joyous cards that you see today. Some of these, when people sent them out, they would get something returned back to them, but it wouldn't necessarily be a Valentines card. It would be what they referred to as a vinegar Valentines. From history.com, quote, during the Victoria era, those who didn't want the attention of certain suitors would anonymously send vinegar Valentines. These cards, also called penny dreadfuls, were the antithesis of customary Valentines, comically insulting and rejecting unwanted admirers, end quote. I doubt anyone has actually seen something like this in today's day and age, but to go back and look at some of these quote, unquote, vinegar Valentines, they get pretty hilarious. I'm sure they weren't funny to those who received them, but just reading them from a third party perspective, it brought a chuckle and a smile to my face. I never thought of something like that occurring with Valentine's Day, but apparently at one point in history, it did occur. But cards aren't the only thing we associate nowadays with the observance of Valentine's Day. We have other things too, like chocolate. From history.com, quote, by the 1840s, the notion of Valentine's Day as a holiday to celebrate romantic love had taken over most of the English speaking world. Into this love craze parade came Richard Cadbury, scion of a British chocolate manufacturing family who was responsible for sales at a crucial point in this company's history. Richard recognized a great marketing opportunity for the new chocolates and started selling them in beautifully decorated boxes that he himself designed, end quote. And because of Richard Cadbury, this whole notion of chocolate on Valentine's took hold and it's now become part of the traditional custom of Valentine's Day that we know in our day and age. From LeChocolatier.com, quote, the association between chocolate and Valentine's Day can be traced back to the 19th century thanks to Richard Cadbury. The Cadbury family revolutionized the chocolate making process, producing smooth, indulgent chocolates. Richard Cadbury designed the first heart-shaped box filled with chocolates specifically for Valentine's Day, forever linking the two, end quote. And finally, from history.com, quote, the Valentine's Day tradition of giving a box of candy was started in the 19th century by Richard Cadbury, a scion of a British chocolate manufacturing family, with a new technique recently established at the company to create more varieties of chocolate. Cadbury pounced on the opportunity to sell the chocolates as part of the beloved holiday, end quote. So that's where we get chocolates from. It's from marketing, of all things. And that's not the only thing that comes from marketing. We see all sorts of things, especially around the time of Easter and Christmas, but we all knew that marketing and commercialism played a huge part in Valentine's Day as well. But as far as chocolate goes, that was where the tradition of chocolate and Valentine's Day were intertwined, from the Cadbury company in the 19th century, and in particular Richard Cadbury. There are other things as well. We're not going to examine everything, but one more thing we're going to look at, and that is the tradition of diamonds in Valentine's Day. From noblemetalrefining.com, quote, although lovers have exchanged gifts on Valentine's Day down through the ages, the custom of giving jewelry didn't really take hold until the 20th century, end quote. And from nolycommunications.com, quote, in 1947 Frances Garrity, one of the only female writers on staff at N.W. Ayer Advertising Agency, coined the phrase, a diamond is forever. The line became a slogan De Beers continues to use to this day. Since Garrity coined the phrase, sales skyrocketed. From 1939 to 1979, De Beers diamond sales in the United States increased from 23 million to 2.1 billion, end quote. So that's where diamonds and Valentine's Day comes from, the whole linkage between those two. And I thought it was rather interesting that this whole tradition of diamonds and Valentine's Day is actually less than 100 years old. So somewhere around the mid-20th century when it actually got started. So that's a fairly recent invention of a tradition. So from Valentine's cards to chocolates to diamonds, we've looked at all those. Those aren't the only things we associate with Valentine's Day today. There are other things such as various symbols that go along with Valentine's in addition to these traditional customs that we're so used to. For example, the heart shape is not actually accurate when you look at a human heart, but it's still associated with Valentine's Day and love and romance in general. And in fact, the first heart shape that we see in history comes from way back in ancient Cyrene. From the History Channel, History.com, quote, Silphium seed pod bore a striking resemblance to the modern Valentine's heart, leading many to speculate that the herb's association with love and sex may have been what first helped popularize the symbol. The ancient city of Cyrene, which grew rich from the silphium trade, even put the heart shape on its money, end quote. You can see this shape comes from the silphium pot. And the ancient city of Cyrene actually put an image of the silphium pot on their coins. And you can see a coin here on your screen. That is one of the coins that they're talking about here. But this heart shape way back then wasn't associated with love and romance. That is another thing that didn't come about until the Middle Ages. Back then, it was just a representation of that silphium pot. And this is this one theory about where this whole heart shape actually comes from. But from Wikipedia.org, quote, In the 5th and 6th century BC, the heart shape was used in the Roman world to represent the seeds of the plant silphium, a plant possibly used as a contraceptive and aphrodisiac. Silver coins from Cyrene of the 5th and 6th century BC bear a similar design, sometimes accompanied by a silphium plant and is understood to represent its seed or root, end quote. Like I said, this whole shape that we know of nowadays as the heart symbol wasn't really associated with love and romance and the like until about the Middle Ages. From Time.com, Time Magazine, quote, The shape is even closer to the look of a bird or reptile. Given that the study of anatomy before the 14th century was based on the dissection of animals, it is thought that the Catholic Church objected to the dissection of the human body during the Middle Ages. It was only during the early years of the 14th century that the scalloped shape of the St. Valentine's heart with a fold or dent in the base made its appearance, end quote. So this is what makes sense for me, that back in the Middle Ages, you would say in here about the 14th century, people were trying to understand biology and anatomy and stuff like that, but there was a taboo against actually cutting open and examining human bodies. So what was a doctor or scientist to do back then? They were to dissect and examine animal bodies, and what they were examining when they thought of the shape of the heart is actually more in line with a reptile heart than it is with a human heart. If you look at the image on your left, that is a diagram or a drawing, crudely, of a reptile heart, and you can see it more closely resembles the shape that we know of as the heart shape nowadays, which is commonly associated with Valentine's Day, and also love, romance, things like that. So back when they were thinking about the heart, the only example they had to go off of was animal hearts, and especially reptile or avian hearts, but you can see here on the right, a human heart actually looks much different, especially just looking at it from the outside, not cutting it open and slaying it any particular way, but this heart shape that we associate nowadays, in my opinion, makes more sense that it actually originated with the dissection of animals, especially reptiles and avians back in the 14th century. From wikipedia.org, the familiar symbol of a heart representing love developed in the 15th century and became popular in Europe during the 16th. Before the 14th century, the heart shape was not associated with the meaning of the heart metaphor. Since the 19th century, the symbol has often been used on Valentine's Day cards, candy boxes, and similar popular culture artifacts as a symbol of romantic love. So there you have it, there's where you get the heart shape from way back in antiquity, and then you can see it develop more in the middle ages when they're looking at reptile hearts and associating that and at that point more with love and romance, but then it starts to really take off in the 19th century when Valentine's Day cards and gifts and things like that really start taking off, and these gifts and things were decorated with this heart-shaped symbol on Valentine's Day as a Valentine's gift. One thing leads to another, and by the self-fulfilling prophecy at that point. So people came to associate the heart-shaped symbol with love and romance, and nowadays that's what we think of it as well. It was because of tradition, and this is where the tradition actually ended up and how it developed a little bit over time. Like I said, if you want more information on this, go further, do your own research, or go check out the notes that we have at GodHonestTruths.com. But another symbol that is commonly associated with Valentine's Day is the symbol of Cupid. Well, where did Cupid come from, and how did this naked winged baby become associated with Valentine's Day? Well, from Reader's Digest, RD.com, quote, the Valentine Cupid you can easily call to mind is an interpretation of Eros, the Greek god of love. The Romans reinterpreted many Greek myths, and Eros is no exception. Once he was adopted by Roman culture, he was renamed Cupid, which stems from the word for desire, end quote. Now, we covered this a little bit when we looked at the holiday of Christmas, this whole concept of interpretatio romana or interpretatio graeca, however you want to put it, where the Romans would take ideas and religious beliefs and all kinds of things from other cultures, especially the Greeks, and romanize them. They would pretty much do and believe the same thing, but they would change the name a little bit, maybe change a little bit about the properties of that particular god. Well, it happened here also with the Greek god Eros, which we get our word erotic from. They took this Greek god Eros, they romanized him, and gave him the name Cupid, and that's where we get this concept of Cupid from. Initially from the Greeks, but mainly from the Romans. Then from time.com, quote, the Romans reinterpreted myths and concepts pertaining to the Greek Eros for Cupid. In classical mythology, Cupid is the god of desire, erotic love, attraction, and affection. His Greek counterpart is Eros, end quote. Then from JSTOR.org, quote, it was the English literary giant Chaucer and a circle of contemporaries who, building on the courtly love tradition, were the original myth-makers of Valentine's Day as a holiday focused on love and fertility. Cupid's association with the day was present from the start. At the time of Chaucer's death in 1400, the transformation of Valentine into an auxiliary or parallel to Cupid, a sponsor of lovers, was well underway, end quote. And finally from history.com, because of his associations with love, 19th century Victorians credited with popularizing Valentine's Day and giving the holiday its romantic stance, began depicting this cherubic version of Cupid on Valentine's Day cards in a trim that has persisted until this day, end quote. So once Valentine's Day, this whole heart symbol and elf, became intertwined with the notion of love and romance, people still remembered the old tales from Roman times and they even looked up to the way things were at times. But they remembered things like Cupid and when the idea was thought of love and romance and Valentine's Day that become associated with it came up in their minds, then they actually thought of these Greek gods and Greek tales that they had also learned about and when two and two came together and that's how Cupid got associated with Valentine's Day. Now once again, Valentine's Day had zero connection to love, romance or anything like that until the late 1300s with Chaucer. So up until that point, at the very least, Cupid would not have been associated to Valentine's Day. But only later, probably back in the 19th century, when Valentine's Day really started taking off, that Cupid was eventually paired up and associated with the day we know of today as Valentine's Day. And as they say, once again, the rest is just history. So in summary, let's do a quick examination real quick just to explain what we're talking about, what we're trying to explain, be more clear and also help you have a more clear basis to make your decisions on Valentine's Day. When we look at various traditions, holidays, these things like that, there are especially three things that we need to ask ourselves when we're deciding whether or not we should or should not celebrate a particular holiday. Number one, does it come from scripture? Number two, does it contradict scripture? Something that scripture prohibits, says don't do things like that. And number three, does it come from pagan sources? So let's look at Passover, for example. An easy one to start out with. Does it come from scripture? Yes. Does it contradict scripture? No. Does it come from pagan sources? No. So obviously Passover would be something that we should and should do. Number one, we're commanded to in scripture, but aside from that, it doesn't come from pagan sources, it doesn't contradict scripture, and we see a direct source for Passover from God's word itself. Next one, look at Independence Day, American July 4th. Does it come from scripture? No. Does it contradict scripture? No. I mean, Jehovah's Witnesses would probably disagree, but you know, we're going to say no, it does not contradict scripture. Does it come from pagan sources? No. So this we would call a neutral holiday. It wouldn't be bad to celebrate it, and it wouldn't be bad to refrain from celebrating it. So that's what we call a neutral holiday. It would be up to you. Now let's look at the holiday of Christmas. Does it come from scripture? No, certainly not. Does it contradict scripture? Yes. And why does it contradict scripture? Because it comes from pagan sources, and we're told directly in scripture, do not worship God like the pagans worship their gods. When it comes to Christmas, that's something that we should not celebrate. Not neutral. Then let's look at Easter. Does it come from scripture? No. There's no command, no reference to Easter anywhere in scripture. Does it contradict scripture? Yes. Just like Christmas, we're told do not worship Yahweh in the way that the pagans worship their gods. Why? Because it comes from pagan sources. So two stripes on Christmas, two stripes on Easter, and in this whole process, two stripes and you're out. So Easter is another one of those that is a negative that we should not celebrate. Then we're going to look at Hanukkah. Does it come from scripture? No. Does it contradict scripture? No. Does it come from pagan sources? No. So that would be another neutral holiday similar to Independence Day. Celebrate it or don't celebrate it, it makes no difference. And finally, the subject of tonight, Valentine's Day. Does it come from scripture? No. There's a lot of talk about love and its various forms in scripture, but there's nothing about Valentine's Day or a one day in the year. This love is something we're supposed to do as a verb, something we're supposed to do throughout the year, every day. So Valentine's Day doesn't come from scripture. Does it contradict scripture? Not as far as we can tell. Does it come from pagan sources? Nope. It certainly doesn't. In fact, most of that paganism that crept its way into the Roman Catholic Church and eventually Christianity as a whole came in way back in the early years in about 200s, 300s, 400s, things like that, especially 400s. Valentine's Day wasn't one of those. Valentine's Day didn't come about, at least as we know it, until the end of the 1300s. So Valentine's Day is something that we would specify as neutral, something like Hanukkah or Independence Day. Celebrate it, you're fine. Don't celebrate it, you're also fine. However, there is one nuance, and I'm sure you've already picked up on that, but let's do a quick bullet point summary about what we did tonight and you'll pick up on it if you haven't already. But just to go over real quick about what we've covered tonight, Rome was supposedly founded by someone named Romulus who was reportedly cared for by a she-wolf named Lupa. Once again, Lupa could be an actual wolf in the mythology or it could actually be referring to Romulus' mother in a negative way. The festival of Lupercalia was celebrated annually on February 15th. Lupercalia was eventually banned by Pope Galatius in 494 CE. There were multiple people named Valentine, we looked at that, but there's little to no real evidence to support any of the legends surrounding him. In 496 CE, Pope Galatius established February 14th as Saint Valentine's Day. Then it was nearly a thousand years later before Valentine's Day as we know it became associated with love and romance. Remember, before 1381, 1300s, before that, Valentine's Day had zero association with any kind of love, romance, lust, carnality, anything like that. But all that was ended in 494 by Pope Galatius. Geoffrey Chaucer in 1381 is the first time we can find Valentine's Day associated with any kind of love, romance, things like that. And even then, as we see in his poems, this whole love and romance thing was more specifically directed at the mating of birds, not humans, but the idea took hold nonetheless. And Valentine's cards date from the 16th century, fairly early, but really became popular and took off in the 18th century and especially the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution. Chocolate on Valentine's Day started in the 19th century thanks to Richard Cadbury. Diamonds became a Valentine's tradition only in the middle of the 20th century. And remember, the whole tradition with diamonds and Valentine's Day is less than a hundred years old. Fairly interesting. And the heart shape that we know today came from the dissection of things like reptiles and avians when they were looking at their hearts because back then there was a taboo against actually dissecting a human's heart. Cupid was the pagan god formerly known as Eros. He was the god of love and lust and carnality and all that kind of thing. But all the same, Cupid was a pagan god coming from paganism. That is a pagan source. So the symbol of Cupid is not neutral. It's definitely something that we should not partake in or associate with even if you do decide to celebrate Valentine's Day. Because as of this moment, that's pretty much the only pagan part of Valentine's Day that we can find. And finally, as we saw, Lupercalia was outlawed and banned in 494 CE. Valentine's Day was established in 496, but even then it was only as a remembrance of a martyr. A thousand years later in 1381, that's the very beginnings of Valentine's Day being associated with love and romance and things like that. So there's a thousand years separating Lupercalia and what we know of as Valentine's Day today. So you may see this over the internet and other people have come to this conclusion, but we just cannot find the evidence to support that Valentine's Day replaced Lupercalia. We just can't see it. There's no continuity there. There's no evidence for it that we can see. We don't see anything in the 7th, 10th, 11th centuries, things like that to support the idea. We just see the stopping of Lupercalia in 494 and then Valentine's Day as we know it, only starting up in the 1300s. So no, in our own humble opinion, Valentine's Day did not replace Lupercalia. And that's just the God-honest truth. So thank you for joining us for this teaching on Valentine's Day. Hopefully you got a lot out of it. Hopefully it was beneficial to you. Hopefully you were educated on some stuff. And like we've been saying throughout this teaching, if you would like more information, you can go to our website at godhonesttruth.com. Click on the post for this particular episode. You'll see the on-demand video, the draw slides, the transcripts, and the notes that we took. And the notes actually have a bunch more information in it than what you see presented here in this teaching. We didn't want to make it an hour or two-hour long teaching, so we cut them down. There's more information in the notes and there's links there where you can go further and find out even more information than that. So go check it out on godhonesttruth.com, click on the post for Valentine's Day, or click on the link that we have conveniently located for you down in the description box. Make sure to go down below and also comment and let us know the one thing of this teaching that stuck out in your mind that you didn't know before. It'd be interesting to see what kind of information is beneficial to you and what kind of information that we can make sure to bring up in future teachings. Make sure to hit that subscribe button down below and ring that bell so you're notified every time that we do a new upload or go live. Also hit that like button if you liked it, hit the downvote if you didn't like it, but let us know in the comments why you didn't so we can improve future episodes. And also make sure to hit that share button and share this around with someone that you may know. Thank you for joining us for another production from God Honest Truth Ministries. We really do appreciate your time and hope that we have been of service to you. If you have any feedback then please reach out to us by writing to us at godhonesttruth.com and make sure to visit our website for more information on our social media links, audio bibles, teaching resources, and so much more.
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