Card manufacturers love St Valentine\u2019s Day, since it is the second most popular card-sending \u201choliday\u201d after Christmas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They don\u2019t care much for the \u201cwhy\u201d, instead focussing on the \u201chow much\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many people do, however, wonder how this day came into being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Academics and historians have dedicated decades on the subject, but certainty has to date eluded them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They can\u2019t even agree on who St Valentine actually was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Catholic Church recognises at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to History.com one of them was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. \u201cWhen Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for \u00adyoung lovers in secret. When Valentine\u2019s \u00adactions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death,\u201d reads the website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then perhaps another person named Valentine was killed for helping Christians escape Roman prisons . . .<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not the most romantic of legends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third possibility was that someone \u00adnamed Valentine, who was already in prison, fell in love with his jailor\u2019s daughter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBefore his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed \u2018From your Valentine,\u2019 an expression that is still in use today,\u201d continues the website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While some believe that St Valentine\u2019s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine\u2019s death or burial (which probably occurred around AD 270), others claim that the Chris\u00adtian church may have decided to place the St Valentine\u2019s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to \u201cChristianize\u201d the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, Romulus and Remus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Valentine\u2019s greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages, though written valentines didn\u2019t begin to appear until after 1400. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written in 1415 by Charles, duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n History.com concludes: \u201cToday, according to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated 1 billion Valentine\u2019s Day cards are sent each year, making it the second largest card-sending holiday of the year (an estimated 2,6 billion cards are sent for Christmas). Women purchase approximately 85% of all valentines.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Card manufacturers love St Valentine\u2019s Day, since it is the second most popular card-sending \u201choliday\u201d after 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