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Saint Valentine's Day, a holiday honoring lovers, is celebrated February 14. Sending greeting cards or gifts to express affection is the traditional method of celebrating the holiday. The cards, or "valentines", are usually decorated with hearts to symbolize love and carry messages of caring and endearment. |
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The origins of Valentine's Day are not well documented. It probably derives from the ancient
Roman feast of Lupercalis (February 15). The holiday gradually became associated with the
feast day (February 14) of two Roman martyrs, both named St. Valentine, who lived in the 3rd
century.
One was a Roman Christian who according to tradition was martyred during the persecution of Christians by Emperor Claudius II on February 14, 270. The other martyr named Valentine, was bishop of Terni, a region in present-day central Italy, they have both been suggested as the inspiration for our modern feast of Saint Valentine's Day. St. Valentine has traditionally been regarded as the patron saint of lovers. |
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| Geoffrey Chaucer should perhaps receive honor as the real Saint Valentine. Although reference books abound with mention of Roman festivals from which Valentine's Day—the day for lovers—may be derived, Jack B. Oruch has shown that no evidence exists to support these connections and that Chaucer is most likely the first to link the saint's day with |
| the custom of choosing sweethearts. No link between the day and lovers exists before the time of Chaucer and several literary contemporaries who also mention it, but after them the link becomes widespread, a circumstance that makes it seem likely that Chaucer, invented the tradition. The fullest and perhaps earliest description of the tradition occurs in Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, composed around 1380, which takes place "on Seynt Valentynes day,/Whan every foul cometh there to chese [choose] his make [mate]." Overall, the custom of choosing valentines on this day is of considerable antiquity, and it was an old belief that birds began to mate on this day as Chaucer says above. On the eve of Saint Valentine's day, young people of both sexes used to meet, and each of them drew one by lot from a number of names of the opposite sex, which were put into a common receptacle. Each gentleman thus got a lady for his valentine, and became the valentine of a lady. | |
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