Valentine’s Day falls on February 14 and is also known as St Valentine’s Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine. The day is an annual festival to celebrate love, friendship, and admiration. The day turns the whole world red. Every year, love birds all across the world express their feelings to their special someone by giving them a variety of gifts and sending them messages of love and affection. Before February 14, a whole week starting from February 7 is devoted to different days such as Teddy Day, Rose Day, Chocolate Day, and others to keep the spirit of love going.
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Why is it celebrated?
Valentine’s Day is celebrated in honour of the 3rd century Roman saint, Saint Valentine. Because of later folk traditions, it has become a crucial cultural, religious, and commercial celebration of romance and love in many parts of the globe.
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History and significance
Due to its resemblance, it has been advocated that the special day of love has origins in the Roman festival of Lupercalia, held in mid-February. At the end of the 5th century, Pope Gelasius put an end to the celebration of Lupercalia and is sometimes credited with replacing it with St. Valentine’s Day, but the true origin of the holiday is unclear at best.
As per Britannica, the day may have taken its name from the priest named Valentine who was martyred around 270 CE by the emperor Claudius II Gothicus because he was secretly helping Christian couples get married to spare husbands from war. The emperor didn’t have faith in marriages and believed that single men were better off soldiers.
And it is because of this that his feast day is associated with love. Significantly, it became associated with romantic love in the 14th and 15th centuries. In 18th century England, the day became the occasion in which couples expressed their emotions of love by giving flowers, confectionery, and greeting cards to their partners.
