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About Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is an annual observance centered on romantic love, marked by the exchange of cards, flowers, chocolate, and gifts between partners, and increasingly between friends and family as well. The date is fixed at February 14 because it originates from the feast day of Saint Valentine on the traditional Christian liturgical calendar, a date set long before the holiday took on its modern romantic meaning. Historians are not entirely certain which Valentine the feast honors, since several early Christian martyrs bore that name, and the surviving legends about him are fragmentary and hard to verify. The romantic associations we recognize today developed gradually in medieval Europe, when poets began linking mid-February with courtship, possibly influenced by the idea that birds began pairing off around this time of year. The holiday became a major commercial occasion in the 19th century, when inexpensive postage and mass-produced greeting cards made it easy to send valentines widely, a practice that helped cement the day's identity in English-speaking countries before spreading further. Celebrations today vary by region: in many Western countries the day centers on couples exchanging gifts or going to dinner, while in parts of East Asia, notably Japan and South Korea, the day traditionally involves women giving chocolate to men, with a reciprocal gift-giving day observed a month later. A common misconception is that Valentine's Day has always been a romantic holiday; in fact, for much of its history it was purely a religious feast day, and its transformation into a day defined by greeting cards and gift-giving is a comparatively recent, largely commercial development. Despite its popularity, it remains a public holiday in only a small number of places.

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