Yes Mississippienne, this thread is very enjoyable!
I’m a day late and a dollar short with this one, but when my son and I were discussing the pressure and expense of Valentine’s Day he said “You know it wasn’t a man who came up with this idea.” Actually…
I looked it up and Chaucer’s the one who helped change St. Valentine’s Day into a romantic one. Because of court dalliances and such, through his poetry he made it popular to give cards and presents and write songs for your “love.”
Here’s a snippet from Martin of Braga’s De correctione rusticorum, in which Martin (a bishop and saint) complains to his friend, bishop Polemius, of the pagan practices that persisted among the vulgar people of sixth century Hispania.
*You promised to renounce the devil and his angels and all his evil works, and you confessed that you believed in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and that you hoped for the resurrection of the flesh in the end of the world and life everlasting.
Behold by what sort of promise and confession you are bound before God! And how is it that some of you, who renounced the devil and his angels and his worship and his evil works, now again return to the worship of the devil? For to light candles before rocks and trees and streams and at crossroads – is this anything but the worship of the devil? To observe divinations and auguries and days of the idols – is this anything but the worship of the devil? To observe “vulcanalia” and the kalends, to decorate tables and place wreaths and watch your step, to place fruit and pour wine into a fire on the trunk of a tree, to place bread upon the stream – is this anything but the worship of the devil? For women at their looms to call on Minerva, to observe for marriages the day of Venus, to pay attention to what day to begin a journey – is this anything but the worship of the devil? To cast spells over herbs for the purpose of evil, to call upon the names of demons in casting spells – is this anything but the worship of the devil? […] You put aside the sign of the cross, which you received at baptism, and you pay attention to other signs of the devil in little birds and sneezings…*