Notes

55 Things to Do on Valentines Day That Actually Feel Romantic
Later on, the church wanted to turn this festival into a Christian celebration and decided to use it to remember St Valentine too. They'd be boyfriend and girlfriend during the festival and sometimes they'd get married. The day gets its name from a famous saint, but we don't actually know exactly who Valentine was.
Get fascinating history stories twice a week that connect the past with today’s world, plus an in-depth exploration every Friday. She’s interested in how history shapes today’s trends, which she explored in a book she authored for students on the origins, and deception, of reality TV. The medieval French poet Oton de Granson also made some references to the holiday.
In 2026, couples, friends, and loved ones across the world marked each day with a special theme, making the week a joyful countdown to the day of love. Valentine Week is a seven-day celebration of love that leads up to Valentine’s Day on February 14. Codes and simple messages give some people the courage to show their true feelings to the person they love.
Today, according to Hallmark, more than 145 million Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year, making Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year behind Christmas. Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions at a time when direct expression of one’s feelings was discouraged. 270—others claim the Christian church might have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan celebration of Lupercalia.
In order to counter the perceived denaturation of national culture, Dragobete, a spring festival celebrated in parts of Southern Romania, has been rekindled after having been ignored during the Communist years as the traditional Romanian holiday for lovers. In 18th-century England, it grew into an occasion for couples to express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as "valentines"). From its pagan roots to its Victorian heyday and beyond, the ways we express love on 14th February continue to evolve, proving that romance, in all its varieties, is timeless. Thus, the festival was rebranded in honour of St Valentine, a somewhat obscure martyr whose connection to romantic love is tenuous at best. And in 1913, Hallmark Cards of Kansas City, Mo., began mass-producing valentines, and it’s been a popular card-giving (and chocolate-indulging!) holiday ever since. Chaucer and Shakespeare romanticized this day of love in their work, and it gained popularity throughout Britain and the rest of Europe.
To make things even sweeter, the New England Confectionery Company (Necco) started to produce the earliest version of Conversation Hearts, which are still popular to this day. Another story contends that it was all to do with an imprisoned priest who fell in love with one of his visitors and began writing letters to her. He was executed for the crime of continuing to wed lovers in secret.
Due to this association with love, those 19th-century Victorians began depicting the cherubic version of Cupid on Valentine’s Day cards in a trend that we still see today! It’s possible that even before Valentine, the priest, was martyred on February 14, the Feast of Lupercalia, a pagan feast of love, was celebrated around the same time. But beach towel is also a great way to get creative with showing people how much they are loved–even if it isn’t a romantic relationship.
From prehistory, though antiquity and into the 21st century, all of history’s biggest chapters. The holiday has expanded to expressions of affection among relatives and friends. 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 Argentina, France, Mexico, and South Korea.
Geoffrey Chaucer’s medieval poem “The Parliament of Fowls,” likely written in the early 1380s, is often cited as one of the oldest references of Valentine’s Day in a romantic sense. However, modern scholars view Lupercalia as a precursor to Valentine’s Day rather than an originator of the modern holiday given their few similarities. Another theory is that Valentine’s Day has its origins in the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, known for its feasts, ritual sacrifice and sexually charged celebrations on February 15. “He calls it quite intentionally Valentine’s Day not St. Valentine’s Day and makes the point in his book…that St. Valentine had nothing to do with the holiday at all,” she says. Nelson points to a 1725 account about the holiday from an antiquarian named Henry Bourne. However, Valentine’s Day as we now know it likely originated as a folk practice to celebrate springtime in mid-17th century England.
Why do we celebrate Valentine's Day on February 14th and where do the holiday customs come from? St. Valentine’s Day was originally a Catholic feast day established in A.D. The stories behind the faiths, food, entertainment and holidays that shape our world.
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