Valentines Day

How Valentine's Day Started

• Valentinus, was one of the early Christian saints who was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were prevented from marrying during the Roman Empire days. 
• Thus St. Valentine's Day began as a celebration for the most popular Saint who was called Saint Valentine. During his imprisonment, he is said to have healed the daughter of his jailer, Asterius.

 Legend states that before his execution he wrote her a letter "from your Valentine" as a farewell. 

 Valentine?s Day later became first associated and dramatized in 18th-century England by Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote of courtly love in the high middle ages.

The event evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering sweets, and sending greeting cards (known as "valentines"). 

Since the 19th century, handwritten valentines have given way to mass-produced greeting cards