Valentine's Day 2021

Cupid comes calling

When: 14th February, 2021
Where: Worldwide

St Valentine’s Day or Valentine’s Day as it is popularly known today is an annual event celebrated all over the world on February 14. The day celebrates love and affection between couples and is also considered as the most popular day to express your feelings to the one you love. Interestingly the age old tradition of men proposing their beloved is reversed during the leap year as girls get the privilege of proposing their love.

Valentine’s Day History

The pagans did it first – at the Feast of Lupercal to honour the Roman God of Fertility. In the finest of Roman(tic) traditions, on the eve of Lupercalia (14th of Feb), a young Roman drew the name of a girl from a pile of names and that girl was favoured with his attention and became his sweetheart for one whole year! And so it began...... the flame of true love that burned all year long!

Christianity added a religious angle when an early Christian, Valentine defied Emperor Claudius the Second’s royal edict decreeing his soldiers remain bachelors – footloose and fancy free. Valentine went right ahead and secretly performed engagement/marriage ceremonies – his disobedience cost him his life but elevated him to sainthood. Christian priests renamed Lupercalia (the day Val lost his head) St. Valentine’s Day – and lovers appropriated it for themselves as their special day (to lose their heads)!

Sending love notes on Val’s Day happened later – Charles (Duke of Orleans not Prince of Wales) penned passionate verse to his beloved from his cell in the Tower of London thus establishing a historic precedent for pining lovers everywhere. By 1840, smart sales executives cottoned on to the enormous potential of Valentine Day cards and tapped the market for all its worth!

Today, young lovers write poems and love notes for their beloveds, shower them with cuddly gifts, chocolates and flowers, especially red roses. Valentine’s Day, today, is synonymous with the colour red which is a colour of passion and love. Shops are filled with heart-shaped balloons, cushions and toys, doves and figurines of winged cupid. This is also the time when florists and card shops do a brisk business.