So everyone basically knows that Valentine’s Day is the day when kids get to go crazy with glitter and glue to make the best heart shaped cards for their friends when boyfriends find out how expensive roses really are. Other than that most people are in the dark when it comes to knowing what this love struck holiday is all about.

Nobody really knows who exactly was St. Valentine, but we do know that there were three different saints that were named Valentinus or Valentine; all of whom were eventually martyred at some point.

In one of the stories, Valentine was a Roman priest who served during the third century. It came across the Emperor at the time, Claudius II that single men made better soldiers than men with wives and children. So, he banned marriage for all single young men. St. Valentine understood the injustice in this situation and would perform marriages in secret. Once Emperor Claudius II found out about all the sneaking around, he put Valentine to death, hence becoming, Saint Valentine.

The second story is that of St. Valentine being killed for trying to help out Christians when they were being tortured by the Romans. This story doesn’t really have anything to do with love though.

In the third story, it is said that while Valentine was in prison he sent his first “valentine” to his jailor’s daughter, who visited him while he was put away. This young lady was the love of his life. He sent her a letter before he was put to death, which said “from your Valentine”. It isn’t much of a surprise to know that this smitten saint became the most popular of all the saints during the Middle Ages in France and England.

There are a couple of reasons why Valentines Day is in the middle of February.

The first reason is because in France and England, it is the mating season for birds. I guess through time, it became mating season for adults.

Another reason is because in Ancient Rome, February is the month of cleansing and purification. There was a festival on February 15 that was dedicated to Faunus, the agricultural god. In the beginning of the festival, priests would meet at a secret cave where the founders of Rome, including Romulus and Remus, were supposedly taken care by a she-wolf. The priests would then sacrifice a dog for purification and a goat for fertility.

Men of the town would then dip the goat’s hide into a bucket of sacrificial blood and slap it against women and their crops. Oddly enough, these kinky women believed that the blood would make them more fertile.

Later on that same day, the ritual continued and the single women would place their names in a big urn where the single men would then pick out a name and be paired off with them for the entire year. Most of the time, the pairing would result in marriage.

In 498 A.D Pope Gelasius declared February 14, Valentines Day and the Roman’s crazy way for choosing a partner later became abolished.

By the eighteenth century it became popular to send tokens of love and appreciation to friends and lovers by writing letters of affection. This method really beats getting slapped by a piece of goat skin.

Now all we have to do is go buy one another heart shaped sour tarts, chocolates and roses just so that we can rejoice in the festivities.