Valentine's Day is one of the popular holidays when people celebrate love.
While it is common among lovers, the holiday has expanded to expressions of affection among relatives and friends who exchange valentines with one another.
The day is popular in the United States as well as in Britain, Canada, and Australia, and it is also celebrated in other countries, including African countries where it is now gaining traction.
In the Philippines, it is one of the most common wedding anniversaries, and hundreds of mass weddings are not uncommon on that date.
Here’s a look at Valentine’s Day, celebrated every February 14.
Facts
Several theories have been coined to explain the origin of Valentine’s Day.
One of the theories suggests Valentine's Day originated from the Lupercalia festival held by ancient Romans in mid-February.
The festival, which celebrated the coming of spring, included fertility rites and the pairing off of women with men by lottery.
However, at the end of the 5th century, it is said that Pope Gelasius forbid the celebration of Lupercalia and is sometimes attributed with replacing it with St. Valentine’s Day, but the true origin of the holiday is vague at best.
Valentine’s Day did not come to be celebrated as a day of romance until about the 14th century.
The early Christian church had at least two saints named Valentine.
One story says that Valentine was an early Christian who was imprisoned for refusing to worship the Roman gods. His friends tossed notes to him through his cell window.
Other accounts hold that it was St. Valentine of Terni, a bishop, for whom the holiday was named, though it is possible the two saints were actually one person.
Another says that Valentine's day may have also taken its name from a priest who was martyred about 270 CE by the emperor Claudius II Gothicus.
Emperor Claudius II forbade young men to marry because he believed unmarried men made better soldiers. A priest named Valentine secretly married young couples to spare their husbands from war.
Sources say the priest signed a letter “from your Valentine” to his jailer’s daughter, whom he had befriended and, by some accounts, healed from blindness. It is for this reason that his feast day is associated with love.
Many stories say that Valentine was executed on February 14 about 269 AD.
Cupid
Cupid is a well-known symbol of Valentine’s Day. He is armed with a bow and arrows in order to pierce people’s hearts.
In Roman mythology, Cupid is the son of Venus, the goddess of love and beauty.
In ancient Greece, Cupid was known as Eros, the young son of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty.
PHOTO/Pexels
Valentine's Day is also among the holidays that Americans are known to spend billions of dollars to commemorate.
