Valentine’s Day: a day that everyone connects to love, lust, and happiness, which usually is shown with red roses, chocolate, and expensive dinner for two. However, Valentine’s Day is actually connected to a violent and sad truth. “Valentine’s Day” was not stemmed from good things, but sad times and hardships during the fifth century.

St. Valentine, the man behind the holiday, was a Roman Priest that went against the emperor at the time, Claudias. Claudias had banned marriage at this time due to the war that they were in the middle of and he believed that not having marriage would make his soldiers better because they would be less concerned about making it home to their wives and families.

Valentine was all about encouraging people to marry in the Christian church. So, because of his beliefs, he began secretly marrying people in the church. He was later found out, put in prison, and tortured for his acts against the emperor. Cbn.com wrote that “In the year 269 AD, Valentine was sentenced to a three part execution of a beating, stoning, and finally decapitation all because of his stand for Christian marriage. The story goes that the last words he wrote were in a note to Asterius’ daughter. He inspired today’s romantic missives by signing it, ‘from your Valentine.’”

So on that note, Happy Valentine’s Day to all!