Valentine's Day

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day (as if you romantic people didn’t know!)

Popular modern sources link unspecified Greco-Roman February holidays alleged to be devoted to fertility and love to St Valentine's Day. This was probably known as Lupercalia.

The Christian church may have decided to celebrate Valentine's feast day in the middle of February in an effort to Christianize celebrations of the pagan festival of Lupercalia.

A commemorative feast was established in 496 by Pope Gelasius I, so you can see that Valentine’s Day has it’s origins in the dim and distant past!

Even no less a person than Shakespeare mentions the event.

To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,

All in the morning betime,

And I a maid at your window,

To be your Valentine.

Then up he rose,

and donn'd his clothes,

And dupp'd the chamber-door;

Let in the maid, that out a maid

Never departed more.
—William Shakespeare , Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5

In 1797, a British publisher issued The Young Man’s Valentine Writer, which contained scores of suggested sentimental verses for the young lover unable to compose his own.

Printers had already begun producing a limited number of cards with verses and sketches, called “mechanical valentines,” and a reduction in postal rates in the next century ushered in the less personal but easier practice of mailing valentines. That, in turn, made it possible for the first time to exchange cards anonymously, which is taken as the reason for the sudden appearance of racy verse in an era otherwise prudishly Victorian.


Paper Valentines being so popular in England in the early 1800s, Valentines began to be assembled in factories. Fancy Valentines were made with real lace and ribbons, with paper lace introduced in the mid 1800's. In the UK, just under half the population spend money on their Valentines and over two billion pounds is spent yearly on cards, flowers, chocolates and other gifts, with an estimated 25 million cards being sent.

So it has now become a money spinner – so much for the romanticism!

I’ve just been on an MSN site in which Dr Pam Spurr tries to analyze the type of people by the gifts they give. These were the results for me:

Chocolates

With chocolates you've got a good traditional man. And a man with traditional values probably enjoys a quite traditional relationship.

He may not be the most imaginative guy but he'll probably be a good one. And he likes to treat his woman to something he knows she'll enjoy.

Romantic commitment rating: 7/10