February 14 is celebrated as Valentine’s Day. It is also called as St. Valentine’s Day. Lovers express their affection with flowers, greeting cards and other romantic gifts on this day. On this day, people send greeting cards called valentines to their sweethearts, friends, and members of their families.

The day is popular in the United States as well as in Britain, Canada, and Australia, and it is also celebrated in other countries, including France and Mexico. It has expanded to expressions of affection among relatives and friends. Many schoolchildren exchange valentines with one another on this day. Youngsters like this day because this is the only day being celebrated in the name of love and romance.

In fact there were several Christian martyrs named Valentine, but the day probably took its name from a priest who was martyred about AD 270 by the emperor Claudius II Gothicus. According to legend, the priest signed a letter to his jailer’s daughter, whom he had befriended and with whom he had fallen in love, “from your Valentine.”

The holiday also had origins in the Roman festival of Lupercalia, held in mid-February. The festival, which celebrated the coming of spring, included fertility rites and the pairing off of women with men by lottery. It is well known that at the end of the 5th century, Pope Gelasius I replaced Lupercalia with St. Valentine’s Day. Then it came to be celebrated as a day of romance from about the 14th century.

Formal messages, or valentines, appeared in the 1500s, and by the late 1700s commercially printed cards were being used. The first commercial valentines in the United States were printed in the mid-1800s. Valentines commonly depict Cupid, the Roman god of love, along with hearts, traditionally the seat of emotion. Because it was thought that their mating season began in mid-February, birds also became a symbol of the day. Traditional gifts include candy and flowers, particularly red roses, a symbol of beauty and love.

It is the right time to strengthen your relationship with your partner. Nowadays this particular day has been very much commercialized. The market is ready to offer almost everything as a Valentine’s Day gift by just attaching a pink colored heart symbol on it as the heart symbol is very much associated with love.

There are many ways to celebrate this day. But whatever you plan for this day, do it from the heart. Whether you make a simple handmade greeting card (or any other craft) or you purchase a simple gift from the market, please do not forget to pack it nicely with sincere feelings for your beloved! Then only your presentation of the gift for Valentine’s Day will be superb. When you pack it with or fill it with your sincere feelings then automatically you have used your creative ideas, efforts to personalize the gift. Naturally this will make your Valentine’s Day a special and memorable one.