Long before Valentine’s Day was celebrated, the Ancient Roman festival took place on Feb. 15
ong before Valentine’s Day was celebrated, a festival that had nothing to do with love took place around the same time of the year. It was called Lupercalia, and it occurred on February 15 each year in ancient Rome. Instead of flowers and chocolates, the festival was marked by more ominous rituals.that the Lupercalia festival is one of the earliest ancestors of Valentine’s Day. The ancient festival’s association with fertility rituals has only added to that idea.
“The festival was to enable or facilitate fertility,” says Kresimir Vukovic, a postdoctoral fellow at the Catholic University of Croatia who has studied Lupercalia. “If you were struck by a Lupercus, one of the priests, it was considered that you would give birth to more children,” he explains. “I don’t think it was a sadistic beating, it was a symbolic beating.
“There is a calendar overlap, but there’s no indication that one was replaced by another,” Vukovic says.
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