Bearing cards, , and poetry, lovers have always swooned on ValentineB次元官网网址檚 Day as cherubs circled overhead. Right?

Or is the history darker, marked by Roman bacchanalia, martyrs and lies?

Innumerable legends claim to explain the origins of ValentineB次元官网网址檚 Day, but as is the case with legends, they leave many questions unanswered. Here are a few:

Where did ValentineB次元官网网址檚 Day originate?

For years, the consensus among historians was that the holiday had something to do with an ancient Roman festival called Lupercalia that fell in mid-February. Noel Lenski, a Yale University historian, pointed to the seasonal and thematic connections between Lupercalia and modern ValentineB次元官网网址檚 Day.

Both are erotic festivals, in a sense, but the ancient one B次元官网网址� which included pairing off women and men by lottery B次元官网网址� also involved religious purification and atonement.

B次元官网网址淣aked young men, drunk, would go running around Palatine Hill swatting virginal women with strips of dog fur and goat fur to make them fertile,B次元官网网址� Lenski said.

According to one legend, Pope Gelasius wanted to put an end to the debauchery in the late fifth century. He declared Feb. 14 as the feast day of a St. Valentine, who had been martyred about 200 years before.

But that theory emerged in an 1807 book without any evidence to support the connection, said Elizabeth White Nelson, a University of Nevada Las Vegas history professor.

B次元官网网址淧eople who think thatB次元官网网址檚 the story havenB次元官网网址檛 read the letter that he actually wrote about Lupercalia,B次元官网网址� she said, referring to the pope. B次元官网网址淚s he pissed off about Lupercalia? Yeah. But does it have anything to do with St. Valentine? ItB次元官网网址檚 very, very hard to find any actual writing that says that.B次元官网网址�

Was St. Valentine a real person?

The most cited legend is about a priest named Valentine who was executed in third-century Rome for marrying couples against the will of the pagan Emperor Claudius II. (He also is said to have cured the blindness of his jailerB次元官网网址檚 daughter.) Another St. Valentine, the bishop of Terni, was martyred around the same time, but little is known about him.

A couple centuries later, a prominent family named Valentine may have promoted themselves by exaggerating an ancestorB次元官网网址檚 story after Christianity had become the prevailing religion, Lenski said.

B次元官网网址淭hey say, B次元官网网址極h, by the way, we have this famous ancestor who was a bishop, and he had been persecuted by the emperor for sanctifying marriages,B次元官网网址橞次元官网网址� he said.

The story prevailed, but the lack of evidence prompted the Catholic Church in 1969 to remove St. Valentine as the primary saint celebrated on Feb. 14. Now, itB次元官网网址檚 officially the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius, the missionary brothers who spread the Cyrillic alphabet to Eastern Europe.

WhatB次元官网网址檚 love got to do with it?

To further confuse things, there were many St. Valentines. As many as 50 saints with some variation of the spelling have been recognized by the Catholic Church, said Henry Kelly, a research professor at University of California Los Angeles.

According to Kelly, author of B次元官网网址淐haucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine,B次元官网网址� the English writer was the first to make B次元官网网址� but he was talking about another St. Valentine whose feast day was May 3. To commemorate King Richard IIB次元官网网址檚 engagement on that day in 1381, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a love poem.

B次元官网网址淗e had Italian friends who told him that it was the feast of St. Valentine, the first bishop of Genoa,B次元官网网址� Kelly said. B次元官网网址淎nd so he picked that day as the day on which all the birds returned to choose their mates for the year.B次元官网网址�

Chaucer continued writing poems every May that associated love, the rites of spring and St. Valentine. Shakespeare and other poets followed suit. Because the Roman Valentine was the most famous one, people conflated the feast days and , Kelly said.

B次元官网网址淚t was the middle of winter, so there werenB次元官网网址檛 any birds around, there werenB次元官网网址檛 any flowers around, and so they started making up things about Valentine,B次元官网网址� he said.

When did it become the ValentineB次元官网网址檚 Day we recognize today?

By the late 18th century, the tradition had solidified in England and spread to the United States, with people , White Nelson said. Around the 1830s, companies began manufacturing Valentine kits that were assembled from lace paper and cutouts of birds and cupids.

Heart-shaped boxes of chocolates would come a few decades later, as would the accusations that the holiday was created to sell cards, flowers and candy, White Nelson said. People were complaining in womenB次元官网网址檚 magazines in the late 19th century that ValentineB次元官网网址檚 Day was too commercial.

B次元官网网址淓verybodyB次元官网网址檚 always expecting ValentineB次元官网网址檚 Day to die out, and it never does,B次元官网网址� she said. B次元官网网址淚tB次元官网网址檚 sort of like saying, B次元官网网址楥oney IslandB次元官网网址檚 too crowded. Nobody goes there anymore.B次元官网网址橞次元官网网址�

To be fair, none of the myth-busting historians interviewed for this article resented that a day celebrating love ended up in February. In fact, they said the opposite.

B次元官网网址淲inter is endless,B次元官网网址� Kelly said. B次元官网网址淭he cold is never ending, and weB次元官网网址檙e grateful for something to rejoice over.B次元官网网址�

Kelly just gives his wife another Valentine on May 3.