Valentine's Day
Valentine’s Day is a holiday that has existed since Roman Times and was “Christianized” by the early church. The holiday is named after one or more early Christian martyrs named Valentine and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496 AD. It is traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as "valentines"). The holiday first became associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished. Before the big card and flower companies came on the scene, people were giving their sweethearts tokens of their affection on February 14th. The first mass-produced cards weren’t the product of a big company, but of a Massachusetts’s woman, Esther Howland, who liked a handmade English Valentine card she received so much that she began manufacturing them (that was in 1847). The U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that approximately one billion valentines are sent each year worldwide, making the day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year, behind Christmas. The association estimates that, in the US, men spend on average twice as much money as women.
posted by Ann at
8:24 PM
1 Comments:
Very interesting Ann, I learned something new.
Hope your day was great.
xo
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