Valentines is just around the corner, and you know what that means: Valentine’s Day, and with it, Valentine’s Day gift shopping, date planning, romantic dinner cooking, and lots of heart-themed crafting. Amid all this hustle and bustle in the name of love, you may be wondering, why exactly do we celebrate Valentine’s Day? Quite possibly followed by, didn’t we just wrap up the holiday season?
Time to take a break from your February 14 to-do list and check out this week’s top 10 fun Valentine’s Day facts and traditions instead, including a little history of the holiday.
So from the Home office in Valentine, Texas Here are the Top 10 Fun Facts about Valentine’s Day
10. A Roman fertility festival was the holiday’s precursor.
It may be difficult to believe given how innocuous the holiday is nowadays, but the roots of Valentine’s Day stem from a bloody pagan fertility festival dating back to 6th century B.C. Every year, between February 13 and 15, Romans celebrated Lupercalia by sacrificing animals and slapping women with their hides, which was believed to make them more fertile. Later, notes Britannica.com, the women would be paired off with men “by lottery.” Definitely not the most romantic way to find that special someone.
9. One legend about St. Valentine says that, although the emperor had banned his soldiers from marriage, believing it a distraction, the priest secretly wed young couples. Another holds that while Valentine was jailed for helping Christians escape brutal Roman prisons, he wrote to a woman (depending on the version of the story, either to his love
or to the jailor’s daughter whose blindness he had healed) and that he signed a letter to her, “From Your Valentine,” a sweet endearment we still use today.
8. The earliest known valentine has a sad love story behind it.
The very first valentine is said to have been a poem sent in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife. Imprisoned in the Tower of London after his capture at the Battle of Agincourt, he wrote
, “I am already sick of love, My very gentle Valentine.” Unfortunately, it would be 20 more long years until the 21-year-old would be released from his cell.
7. Wearing your heart on your sleeve was a real thing.
But not in a grisly sort of way. Back in the Middle Ages, during a festival honoring the goddess Juno, Roman men would draw the names of women they would be partnered with for the following year. (Remember, Emperor Claudius II didn’t condone marriage, only temporary couplings.) According to Smithsonian.com
, they would then show off the name of their intended by wearing it on their sleeves for the rest of the celebration.
6. Cupid was a Greek god.
Literally. Yep, that cute little chubby baby with the bow and arrow we associate with Valentine’s Day started out way back in 700 B.C. as the Greeks’ handsome, virile god, Eros. Able to make mortals fall in love (or hate) with his magical arrows, he was remade into Cupid by the Romans around 4th century BCE. But, as Time.com reports, it wasn’t until the turn of the 19th century that Cupid became the face of Valentine’s Day for his “love-creating abilities.”
5. Valentine’s Day chocolate was a stroke of marketing genius.
Next time you open a beautiful heart-shaped box of chocolates on February 14, you can thank Richard Cadbury. The son of the manufacturer of Cadbury Chocolate, he created the first known heart-shaped box of chocolates in an effort to drive up sales for the family business. From that first Valentine’s Day box sold in 1861 grew an industry that now counts some 66 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolate sold annually.
4. Those little Conversation hearts had humble beginnings.
The iconic little candy hearts emblazoned with Valentine’s Day messages were first created by a machine initially invented to make medical lozenges. But it wasn’t long before the Boston-based pharmacist who originated the gadget’s design decided to switch from making cough drops to crafting candy wafers, rebranding his company as New England Confectionery Company, or Necco.
By 1866, Necco was producing candy printed with messages that included “Married in white you have chosen right” and “How long shall I have to wait? Please be considerate.” Thirty-five years later, that candy took on the familiar heart shape we know and love today. Every day, some 100,000 pounds of the chalky, talkative little candies, which have a shelf life of five years, are made. That adds up to a whopping eight billion conversation hearts annually.
3. The Victorians began the trend of giving flowers for Valentine’s Day.
Red roses as a symbol of romance dates back to ancient Rome—it was the favorite posy of Venus, the Roman goddess of love (and Cupid’s mom). But it wasn’t until the Victorian era that men really began giving the flower to women they were wooing.
2. Valentine’s Day is florists’ busiest day of the year.
That’s according to the Society of American Florists, putting the holiday ahead of even Christmas/Chanukah and Mother’s Day in terms of number of purchases. Most of those flowers are (you guessed it) roses. About 250 million roses are grown for Valentine’s Day, and more than half are red.
And the #1 Top 10 Fun Fact about Valentine’s day is……
1. Valentine’s Day is expensive.
At least if you go by statistics released by the National Retail Federation, which found that Americans spent more than $23.9 billion (about 175 smackers per consumer) on the holiday in 2022. Much of that money goes toward jewelry (an estimated $6.2 billion!) and that includes a whole lot of diamond rings. As many as six million couples get engaged on Valentine’s Day.
There is this week’s Top 10 list about Valentine’s Day. So if you’re looking for a vertical to go after, candy shops, jewelry stores and flower shops are great to have in your portfolio.
have an awesome weekend,
David
Payment Lynx Daily 