Valentine's Day 2025 is on Friday, February 14, 2025: Valentine's Day Truth?

Friday, February 14, 2025 is Valentine's Day 2025. Saint Valentine's Day, also known as Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is observed on February 14 each year.

Saint Valentine's Day, also known as Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is observed on February 14 each year.

Valentine's Day is a 2010 American ensemble romantic comedy film directed by Garry Marshall. The screenplay and the story were written by Katherine Fugate, Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein.

Just what do flower shops, card shops and bistros share? They all adore Valentine's Day.

It's vague why the celebration of Saints Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terri has come to be associated with overpriced blooms; the very first link between Saint Valentine and enchanting love was made by Chaucer in the 14th Century. Just what's specific is that we cannot consider the word 'Valentine' without conjuring photos of red roses, large cards with hearts on and candlelit tables set for 2.

The concern of how and even whether to commemorate Valentine's Day can end up being vexed. For couples who are significantly in love, every day is Valentine's Day. Why sully something gorgeous by indulging in a day that, for many, has been polluted by business?

Great deals of folks do celebrate, nevertheless, and if you're among them, you'll need to schedule a table months, possibly years ahead of time. Here's to love!

Valentine's Day is a holiday celebrated on February 14. It is the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other; sending Valentine's cards, or offering candy. It is very common to present flowers on Valentine's Day. The holiday is named after two among the numerous Early Christian martyrs named Valentine. The day became associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished.

The day is most closely associated with the mutual exchange of love notes in the form of "valentines." Modern Valentine symbols include the heart-shaped outline and the figure of the winged Cupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten notes have largely given way to mass-produced greeting cards.[1] The mid-nineteenth century Valentine's Day trade was a harbinger of further commercialized holidays in the United States to follow.[2] The U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that approximately one billion valentines are sent each year worldwide, making the day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year behind Christmas. The association estimates that women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines.[3]

Contents [hide]

1 History

1.1 February fertility festivals

1.2 Chaucer's love birds

1.3 Medieval and modern times

1.4 The evolving legend

2 Equivalents and in other cultures

2.1 In the West

2.1.1 In the Americas

2.2 In Asia

2.3 In the Islamic world

3 See also

4 References & Notes

5 External Links

History

Numerous early Christian martyrs were named Valentine. Until 1969, the Catholic Church formally recognized eleven Valentine's Days. The Valentines honored on February 14 are:

Valentine of Rome (Valentinus presb. m. Romae): a priest in Rome who suffered martyrdom about AD 269 and was buried on the Via Flaminia. His relics are at the Church of Saint Praxed in Rome.[4] and at Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin, Ireland.

Valentine of Terni (Valentinus ep. Interamnensis m. Romae): He became bishop of Interamna (modern Terni) about AD 197 and is said to have been killed during the persecution of Emperor Aurelian. He is also buried on the Via Flaminia, but in a different location than Valentine of Rome. His relics are at the Basilica of Saint Valentine in Terni (Basilica di San Valentino).

The Catholic Encyclopedia also speaks of a third saint named Valentine who was mentioned in early martyrologies under date of 14 February. He was martyred in Africa with a number of companions, but nothing more is known about him.

Some sources say the Valentine linked to romance is Valentine of Rome, others say Valentine of Terni.[citation needed] Some scholars (such as the Bollandists[citation needed]) have concluded that the two were originally the same person. In any case, no romantic elements are present in the original Early Medieval biographies of either of these martyrs.

An overview of attested traditions relevant to the holiday is presented below, with the legends about Valentine himself discussed in the end.

February fertility festivals

Though popular modern sources link unspecified Graeco-Roman February holidays alleged to be devoted to fertility and love to St Valentine's Day, Professor Jack Oruch of the University of Kansas argued[5] that prior to Chaucer, no links between the Saints named Valentinus and romantic love existed. Thus whether or not in the ancient Athenian calendar, the period between mid-January and mid-February was the month of Gamelion, was dedicated to the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera is immaterial.

In Ancient Rome, February 15 was Lupercalia, an archaic rite connected to fertility, without overtones of romance. Plutarch wrote:

Lupercalia, of which many write that it was anciently celebrated by shepherds, and has also some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea. At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy.[6]

The word Lupercalia comes from lupus, or wolf, so the holiday may be connected with the legendary wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus. Priests of this cult, luperci would travel to the lupercal, the cave where the she-wolf who reared Romulus and Remus allegedly lived, and sacrifice animals (two goats and a dog). The blood would then be scattered in the streets, to bring fertility and keep the wolves away from the fields. [7] Lupercalia was a festival local to the city of Rome. The more general Festival of Juno Februa, meaning "Juno the purifier "or "the chaste Juno," was celebrated on February 13-14. Pope Gelasius I (492-496) abolished Lupercalia.

Chaucer's love birds

A portrait of English poet Geoffrey Chaucer by Thomas Hoccleve (1412). The earliest known link between Valentine's Day and romance is found in Chaucer's Parliament of FoulesThe first recorded association of Valentine's Day with romantic love is in Parlement of Foules (1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer:[8]

For this was on seynt Volantynys day

Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese [choose] his make [mate].

This poem was written to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia[9]. A treaty providing for a marriage was signed on May 2, 1381.[10] (When they were married eight months later, he was 13 or 14. She was 14.)

On the liturgical calendar, May 2 is the saints' day for Valentine of Genoa. This St. Valentine was an early bishop of Genoa who died around AD 307.[11][12] Readers incorrectly assumed that Chaucer was referring to February 14 as Valentine's Day. However, mid-February is an unlikely time for birds to be mating in England.[13]

Chaucer's Parliament of Foules is set in a fictional context of an old tradition, but in fact there was no such tradition before Chaucer. The speculative explanation of sentimental customs, posing as historical fact, had their origins among eighteenth-century antiquaries, notably Alban Butler, the author of Butler's Lives of Saints, and have been perpetuated even by respectable modern scholars. Most notably, "the idea that Valentin'e Day customed perpetuated those of the Roman Lupercalia has been accepted uncritically and repeated, in various forms, up to the present"[14]

Medieval and modern times

Swedish calendar showing St Valentine's Day, February 14, 1712Using the language of the law courts for the rituals of courtly love, a "High Court of Love" was established in Paris on Valentine's Day in 1400. The court dealt with love contracts, betrayals, and violence against women. Judges were selected by women on the basis of a poetry reading.[15][16]

The earliest surviving valentine is a fifteenth-century rondeau written by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his "valentined" wife, which commences.

Je suis desja d'amour tanné

Ma tres doulce Valentinée… (Charles d'Orléans, Rondeau VI, lines 1–2)

At the time, the duke was being held in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415.[17]

Valentine's Day is mentioned ruefully by Ophelia in Hamlet (1600-01): "Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day."

In 1836, relics of St. Valentine of Rome were donated by Pope Gregory XVI to the Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin, Ireland. In the 1960s, the church was renovated and relics restored to prominence.[5] In American culture,Saint Valentine's Day was remade in the 1840s; as a writer in GFTraham's American Monthly observed in 1849, "Saint Valentine's Day... is becoming,nay it has become, a national holyday."[18]

In the 1969 revision of the Roman Catholic Calendar of Saints, the feastday of Saint Valentine on 14 February was removed from the General Roman Calendar and relegated to particular (local or even national) calendars for the following reason: "Though the memorial of Saint Valentine is ancient, it is left to particular calendars, since, apart from his name, nothing is known of Saint Valentine except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on 14 February."[19] The feast day is still celebrated in Balzan and in Malta where relics of the saint are claimed to be found, and also throughout the world by Traditionalist Catholics who follow the older, pre-Vatican II calendar.

Valentine's Day postcard, circa 1910

Tree decorated for Valentine's DayThe reinvention of Saint Valentine's Day in the 1840s has been traced by Leigh Eric Schmidt.[20] In the United States, the first mass-produced valentines of embossed paper lace were produced and sold shortly after 1847 by Esther Howland (1828-1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts. Her father operated a large book and stationery store, and she took her inspiration from an English valentine she had received. Since 2001, the Greeting Card Association has been giving an annual "Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary."

In the second half of the twentieth century, the practice of exchanging cards was extended to all manner of gifts in the United States, usually from a man to a woman. Such gifts typically include roses and chocolates. In the 1980s, the diamond industry began to promote Valentine's Day as an occasion for giving jewelry.

The day has come to be associated with a generic platonic greeting of "Happy Valentine's Day." As a joke, Valentine's Day is also referred to as "Singles Awareness Day."

In some North American elementary schools, students are asked to give a Valentine card or small gift to everyone

Why is Valentine's day important?

Valentine's Day has lost it's original importance. The day is based on Saint Valentine who was arrested for believing in Jesus. The jailor's daughter was blind and given the job of bringing food to the prisoners because it was believed she was worthy of nothing else. Saint Valentine befriended her and taught her Christianity. The night before he was to be executed she asked him to make her a Christian and he asked God to heal her blindness. He did giving credit to "Valentino" for this miracle. He left her a note telling her how much God loved her and signed it, "Your Valentine". As you can see, it has nothing to do with having a significant other. It was supposed to be about the gift of love to people because God loves us. Now that you know, stop worrying about whether you "have" someone, and start showing anyone who is important to you that you love them. On Valentine's Day, give your friend a hug, tell your sister you appreciate her, tell your mother she's special and why. That is how one should properly spend Valentine's Day. Of course, if you're not Christian you may want to reconsider why you would be concerned at all about this holiday in the first place. Its important to always know why we celebrate different holidays, don't you think?

Valentine's Day expressions in french?

Valentine's Day in France

There were some decorations in the stores, but I don't know if this romantic day is celebrated as much in France as in the US, or in the same way.

We went to the open house of our favorite vineyard, Château les Valentines, where we tasted the new crop and took a little quiz on scents, sounds, and images related to wine making (and won a T-shirt). There was a 10% discounts on all purchases, so we stocked up for lots of future romantic dinners.

While giving me a box of chocolates, my husband told me this little story: there were two female customers at the chocolate shop with him, and when he saw that they were both choosing Valentine's Day chocolates, he asked them if women normally buy these chocolates in France. One woman said, "Sure, why not?" He explained that in the US, it's usually the man who is obliged to give them to his significant other, and the other customer said, "Oh, no, French women are very macho."