> The link down there sort of explains why it might be named after St. Valentine. But yeah, it's mostly just a day for marketing. Sort of like Halloween, only you can buy candy for yourself on that day.

St Valentine's Day is no longer a holiday in the Catholic Church on the grounds that there's no evidence that St Valentine ever existed. Several other saits have had their feast days quietly dropped for the same reason, most famous amongst them is probably St Christopher.

But even if St Valentine was a real person, the story of him passing the love note didn't appear until the 14th Century, when the ideals of Romantic Love and Courtly Love were being developed.

Yes, Rome had fertility festivals in the middle of February, but they stopped a good thousand years before St Valentine's Day became associated with romance. There really is no evidence to connect St Valentine's Day (in any incarnation) with any pre-existing celebration of love, and no evidence of any romantic connotations of St Valentine before the 14th Century.