On February 14 many of us will take the opportunity to celebrate Valentine's Day with our loved ones.
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The popularity of the day has grown over the years with a survey conducted in 2019 reporting that we spent around $377 million on gifts. The most popular gift for men was alcohol, while for women it was flowers.
The origins of Valentine's Day are not clear but many sources believe that it stems from the story of St Valentine, a Roman priest who was martyred on or around February 14 in the year 270 CE.
How he became the patron saint of lovers remains a mystery, but one theory is that the church used the day of St Valentine's martyrdom to Christianise the old Roman Lupercalia, a pagan festival held around the middle of February.
The ancient ceremony included putting girls' names in a box and letting the boys draw them out. Couples would then be paired off until the following year.
The Christian church substituted saints' names for girls' names in hope that the participant would model his life after the saint whose name he drew.
Eventually the custom of sending anonymous cards or messages to those whom one admired became the accepted way of celebrating Valentine's Day.
There was an increase in interest in Valentine's Day, first in the United States and then in Canada, in the mid-19th century.
Early versions of Valentine cards fashioned of satin and lace and ornamented with flowers, ribbons, and images of cupids or birds appeared in England in the 1880s.
Valentine's Day is celebrated across the world and in many different ways. In Japan, it is traditional for women to give gifts to men and then men will give gifts to women on March 14, which is known as White Day, because the gifts need to be white.
England has a romantic tradition of couples getting together to write poems describing their love for each other. It's the origin of the ready-made greeting cards we see today.
The quirkiest tradition worldwide can be found in Denmark where single people will send anonymous letters or poems to their crushes, usually written on paper snowflakes. If the recipient can guess the sender's identity, the sender will have to give them an Easter egg.
