Of course I have to ruin Valentine’s Day. You knew this was coming.

Valentine’s Day. We celebrate with someone special. We spend billions for cards, dinners, and….. flowers. My biggest problem with this holiday is that I don’t want to celebrate my relationship with The Sheconomist on the same day everyone else celebrates theirs.

St. Valentine’s Day (yeah, Saint) has been commercialized by Hallmark, Kay Jewelers, and anyone else that stands to profit by convincing guys they are bad people for not celebrating the day of love.

But I can’t blame everything on them. Just like the reason Christmas is celebrated in winter even though Jesus was born in the summer, St Valentine’s Day exists to compete with other religions. Blame the church.

The first problem with the day is that there is no one St. Valentine. There are as many as 3, and there could be more. The three most well known were a priest in Rome, a bishop from another part of Italy, and a martyr in Africa.

In 496 AD the Pope established the feat of St Valentine, but he said the feast was to honor someone whose deeds are known only to God. In other words, the feast was made up and no one knows if any of these 3 guys did anything special. Martyr in Africa is pretty cool, but there isn’t any documentation of this.

1000 years later a great story popped up of St. Valentine. He was marrying Christians (which was illegal) and captured by the emperor of Italy. He won favor with the emperor and used the opportunity to try and convert him to Christianity. Ballsy. But he was found out and clubbed and stoned to death. But bad-ass Valentine wouldn’t give up. They had to behead him in order to finish him off. This would have happened some time around 270 AD.

So in other words you’ve got 1000 year old stories and 3 different Valentines, and no proof of any having actually existed. But the Pope set up the feast of St. Valentine. Why? Well back in the early days of Christianity Christians had to compete with existing holidays in order to seem cool. The marriage of Zeus and Hera was celebrated in the 30 days leading up to mid-February. 2/13-2/15 were dates where a traditional pagan ritual of fertility were celebrated.

How odd is it that St. Valentine’s Day ended up being celebrated on the 14th? Not odd at all. St. Valentine’s day is a charade to compete with pagan holidays, just like why Christmas is in December. Thank goodness we don’t have competing holidays anymore…

To read more about Valentine’s Day, check out the Wikipedia article. Be sure to read about Geoffrey Chaucer’s potential involvement.

By The Weakonomist

The Weakonomist is the founder of Weakonomics. Clicking the picture of the puppy will tell you more about him. If you like what you're reading consider subscribing to the blog, following him on Twitter, and checking out the related posts below. Please consider a donation if you really enjoy Weakonomics. Also keep in mind that nothing I say can be construed as financial advice.

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