00:00Valentine's Day. Chocolate, roses, Hallmark. But here's the thing. Nobody actually agrees on where
00:06this holiday came from. And I mean nobody. Not historians, not the Catholic Church, not even
00:10Hallmark itself who basically invented the version we know today. So let's do what we always do here.
00:16Find the truth, lose a few illusions, and maybe ruin the holiday for a few people.
00:20Myth number one. Valentine's Day comes from a Roman festival called Lupercalia where men hit
00:26women with goat skins. Okay, Lupercalia was real. It was chaotic. It involved rituals and matchmaking
00:32that probably wouldn't pass HR today. But the idea that it evolved into Valentine's Day,
00:37modern historians say that connection is super flimsy. Just because Lupercalia happened in mid-February
00:43doesn't mean it turned into February 14th. And this theory didn't even show up until the 20th
00:47century. So no, the Romans didn't invent your partner's favorite holiday. Myth number two.
00:52The holiday was created in remembrance of Saint Valentine who was tragically executed for secretly
00:57marrying soldiers when marriage was banned by the emperor. Adorable. Poetic. Great for a romcom,
01:03but probably not true. There were multiple Saint Valentines, at least three, and over time they
01:08collected mythical stories like Pokemon cards. And just like Pokemon cards, those stories get traded,
01:13passed around, lost in your backpack. You get the point. The evidence was so thin that in 1969 the
01:18Catholic Church actually removed Valentine's Day from the official calendar because the details were
01:23quote, murky. A.K.A. the church wasn't about to keep celebrating a Saint's Day when they couldn't
01:28even confirm which saint it was. Now before it was ousted from the church, St. Valentine's Feast was
01:33celebrated on February 14th, but it wasn't seen as a romantic holiday yet. Just a day of feasting,
01:38which is typical for back then. So if it wasn't the goat skins and it wasn't the saints,
01:43where did the romance of Valentine's Day come from? Well, myth number three, the first real link
01:48between February 14th and romance comes from one guy, Geoffrey Chaucer. In 1375 he wrote a poem
01:56connecting February 14th to birds choosing their mates. And despite the coincidence of this landing
02:01on the same day as St. Valentine's Feast, historians say Chaucer just made it up. There's zero evidence
02:06that this was inspired by the saint or the feast. Nevertheless, medieval Europeans loved the idea.
02:12Birds pairing off in February, the humans said, same twin. Writers copied it, artists copied it,
02:18people started sending notes to their crushes with little bird drawings. From there the holiday
02:22snowballed, handwritten notes turned into printed cards, Hallmark showed up in 1913 and said,
02:27yeah, we'll take it from here. So all along it was just a medieval poet who wrote one influential
02:33line about birds falling in love on a random holiday. And the world ran with it. Honestly,
02:38that tracks. So if you learned something today, send this to your Valentine, tag them below,
02:42and if you love us too, hit follow and check out our website for more.
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