Valentine's Day is a holiday that celebrates love each year on February 14. In ancient pagan Rome, February 14 was the day before the begining of the Festival of Lupercalia which honored fertility. On that day, young women would write their names on pieces of paper which were placed in a jar. Each young man would pull out a paper from the jar and would be paired with the young lady on the paper during the entire festival. Pope Gelasius in 496 wanted to change the pagan Festival of Lupercalia into a Christian holiday. So he renamed February14 Valentine's day in memory of a Christian saint who was executed by the Romans. According to the legend, the Roman emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage for a period of time so that it would not interfere with military service for the young Roman men whom he needed to fight in his army. Valentine was a priest who was executed for defying the emperor's law by secretly marrying young men and women. Chaucer revived the Valentine legend in a poem he wrote in 1391 honoring the marriage of the English King Richard II to his bride, Anne of Bohemia. Gift giving and card exchanging on Valentine's Day became popular in England in the 1700s. Esther Howland began the commercial production of Valentine cards in the United States in 1850. Since then Valentine cards have grown to one of the most important cards in the greeting card industry.
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