My first exposure to Valentine’s Day was when I was 9 years old watching season three, episode one of “Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse.” Dozens of Cherubian Cupids and romantic paraphernalia decorated the holiday-themed episode and gave me a stark introduction to the iconography.
As a Rick Riordan enthusiast, the obnoxious association of the Roman love God with Valentine’s Day stuck with me since. The pagan idol contests with the majority of other Western holidays that are predominantly monotheistic.
However, fourth-year University of Iowa student Jahni Green finds that the purpose of the holiday is not to commemorate Roman paganism, but to promote consumerism.
“It’s mainly a way to generate revenue for larger companies. Corporations try to and successfully profit off of events that have positive connotations,” Green said. “I lived in Japan for 4 years and they had a holiday called White Day. People would reciprocate gifts given to them on Valentine’s Day. So there, you have people splurging on their partners twice within a month.”
In 2025 alone, 56 percent of American consumers are expected to spend a total of $27.5 billion on romantic gifts and gestures. Interestingly, the success of this capital strategy is rooted in cute allusions to Cupid because businesses understand that an arrow-shooting baby and red hearts are much more appealing than the brutal death of a saint.
“Valentine’s Day is based on a real person. Saint Valentine was a 3rd-century Roman saint, and he was murdered during the persecution of Christians,” Green said. “The holiday is actually meant to commemorate him, so it’s tied to Christianity more than Cupid.”
This year, Valentine’s Day falls on the same day as the Muslim event of Shab-e-Barat, or “Night of Forgiveness.” The holiday is already prohibited in Islam in a pre-marital context, due to its celebration of relationships, but now it is entirely overridden by devotion and worship.
With all this as the backdrop for the holiday, a conversation on the intersectionality of paganism, polytheism, and monotheism is necessary.
Prashna Dahal, a second-year student, grew up Hindu. While she no longer identifies with Hinduism, she is familiar with polytheistic religions.
“There are many polytheistic holidays in our calendar, like Halloween,” Dahal said. “Some people have a lot of reservations about Halloween and its associations with black cats, death, and the occult. Growing up, I noticed the dominance that Christianity had living here, so it didn’t make it easy to bring up Hinduism and its polytheism in a lot of contexts. But you don’t see any of that with Valentine’s Day even though it also has ties to polytheism.”
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First-year student Varun Gulwadi expanded on this. He identifies with Hinduism and sees many similarities that allow him to understand the romantic holiday better.
“In Hinduism, we have many different gods and goddesses that we worship,” he explained. “But the main principle is that the love you give is not devoted to one of the idols. It is to everyone. Your devotion is a selfless act. So, there are commonalities between Western relationships and Hindu relationships because all in all it’s about love and devotion.”
Even in Islam, which does not deem Valentine’s Day as entirely permissible, love is behind all interactions between others and the worship of God. Muslims ask for forgiveness out of affection and trust in God.
Meanwhile, Jahni Green doesn’t extensively relate religion to Valentine’s Day.
“I don’t identify with a religion, but every holiday has a lot of buried cultural context behind it,” she said. “I lived in Japan for 4 years in total, and there’s another holiday called White Day, where you reciprocate the gifts you received on Valentine’s Day exactly a month later.”
There is so much ambiguity surrounding this holiday that there is a lot more room to interpret and celebrate it. There is, however, one universal feeling behind it that everyone can embrace.
“Love is found in all religions and in many different ways. This holiday lets everyone connect to love and accept it as a universal feeling,” Gulwadi said. “It’s very simple to say, but love transcends just one religion. It is present in everything.”