02/01/14

12 Romantic Facts About Valentine’s Day

We celebrate Valentine’s Day as a day of love every year on the 14th of February. How do we celebrate? We buy each other mushy cards, yummy chocolates, masses of flowers, super smelly perfume, fancy schmancy dinners; goodies of all kinds. We recognize that it’s a day to express love for one another but there’s more behind the romance of Valentine’s Day than you may already know. So take out a bon-bon and read on.

Whisper these romantic facts about Valentine’s Day in your sweetie’s ear over champagne – start with “Honey, did you know…”

The oldest known love poem was written on a clay tablet and was written around 3500 B.C. Now, that’s true love, and they didn’t even have a thesaurus, let alone a pen.

We started celebrating Valentine’s Day on February 14th because it’s believed that is when birds begin mating each year. That’s where we got the term “love birds”.

Red roses were the favorite of Venus, the Roman Goddess of Love, hence the reason why almost 200 million people are given roses each Valentine’s Day. Playing “he-loves-me, he-loves –me-not” would take about 47 months with that many roses.

“Lace”, used in many Valentine’s Day decorations, is Latin for snare or net, as in to catch a person’s heart. Awww.

It has been suggested that Valentine’s Day is named after Valentine of Terni who performed Roman wedding ceremonies against orders from Claudius II. Valentine was killed on February 14, 269. It is said that the almond tree that he was buried near burst into pink flowers shortly after his burial.

A kiss on Valentine’s Day is supposed to bring good luck throughout the entire year. SMOOCH IT UP, then head to Vegas!

In the 19th century, physicians would prescribe chocolates to patients who were pining for lost loves. We are very familiar with this type of medicinal use of chocolate.

Cupid dates back to Greek mythology. He was the son of Aphrodite who was the goddess of love. Back then, he was known as Eros until the Romans adopted much of the Greek culture where Aphrodite became known as Venus and Eros was therefore known as Cupid.

In 496, Roman men started the practice of sending women they admired and wished to court handwritten greetings of affection on Feb. 14th. This was thought to have started the tradition of Valentine’s cards.

Victorians, living in an era when people did not believe in expressing emotion, found the language of flowers to be an acceptable form of expression. They gave meaning to everything about the flower including its color, size and position in relation to other flowers. What does your Valentine’s bouquet say?

Each Valentine’s Day, about 220,000 people get engaged. We’ll be checking our social media for announcements on February 15th.

So if you’re one of the folks who think Valentine’s Day is just another day to spend excessively on ultra-lavish gifts, think again. Valentine’s Day can be a great way to tell the people in your life how much they mean to you and to make an entire day just about that; being in love.

One more fun fact about Valentine’s Day; if you buy those conversation candy hearts and your lovey-dovey doesn’t eat them right away, no worries…they have a shelf life of five years. BONUS!

“XXXOOO”

IBB

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