Valentine’s Day

"Within you, I lose myself.
Without you, I find myself wanting to be lost again."

Celebrated on February 14 every year, Valentine’s Day is celebrated as the festival of love. Lovers cherish this day to express their feelings to their dearly-loved ones along with flowers, gifts, cards and chocolates. The day for lovers is celebrated all over the world including Europe, Asia, Africa and America. The exchange of chocolates and flowers is traditional on Valentine's Day in America. Flowers, cards and gifts businesses make brisk trade on the occasion.

People in some countries celebrate this day differently. In some North American elementary schools, students give a Valentine card or a small gift to everyone in the class. The greeting cards exchanged between students mention what they appreciate about each other. In Slovenia, a proverb says that "St Valentine brings the keys of roots," so on February 14, plants and flowers start to grow.

This day has been celebrated in Europe since long. There is literary record conveying that the day was celebrated by people in some countries of the continent. The day was associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished. The day was closely associated with the mutual exchange of love notes in the form of "Valentines". Valentine's Day and romance has found mention in Chaucer's Parliament of Foules. This day is also mentioned by Ophelia in Hamlet: "Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day."

On this day, it is believed that people earlier offered their loved ones handwritten notes expressing their feelings for them. And since 19th century, handwritten notes have given way to printed greeting cards. Since the mid-19th century, greeting card-makers all over the world have a field day on this special day. In the second half of the 20th century, the practice of exchanging cards was extended to all manner of gifts in the US, usually from a man to a woman. Such gifts typically include roses and chocolates. In the 1980s, the diamond industry started to promote the day as an occasion for presenting jewelry as a gift to loved ones.

Now on Valentine's Day, people send greeting cards widely. US Greeting Card Association estimates that about one billion cards are sent each year worldwide, making the day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year behind Christmas. The association estimates that women buy approximately 85 per cent of the Valentine Cards.