Why We Are Supposed To Give Gifts Or Cards On Valentine's Day

Author: RickLondon
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Would you believe that in ancient Rome, love was a lottery? A cruel one at that. Here's how it worked. A male teen's right to passage to the Roman God Lupercus was through a teenage girl. Each year, all the available teenage girls in the city wwere placed in a box and a male picked a name aat random. She was assigned to him for a year. It would take 8 more centuries before the church fathers put an end to it. They discovered it was a sort of celebration of a relatively unknown bishop named Valentine who had been martyred two centuries prior to the beginning of the Roman tradition.

The way boys became men, or rights to passage to manhood, was, once per year, all the teenage girl's names in the village were place in a box. All the boys one by one picked a name from the box. The name he chose was the girl who would be more or less "his slave" for a year. It would be another eight centuries before church leaders terminated this annual event.

Church records show that a priest who lived near Rome in 270 A.D., St Valentine was the inspiration. It was a time when Emperor Claudius 11 issued an edict forbidding marriage , as he felt married men were too emotionally attached to their families and did not make good fighters. On top of that, the Roman Empire was about to see its final days.

St. Valentine, a bishop, noticed how traumatic it was for young lovers to be unable to marry. So he performed secret weddings in hidden-away places. It did not take long for Claudius to discover these "drive-by" weddings and have him arrested. Claudius had conflicted emotions regarding the arrest of Valentine and attempted to convert him to the Roman gods to save him from being put to death.

Valentine's execution date was February 24th, 270.

While Valentine was in prison awaiting his fate, he came in contact with his jailer, Asterius. The jailer had a blind daughter. Asterius requested him to heal his daughter. Through his faith he miraculously restored the sight of Asterius' daughter. Just before his execution, he asked for a pen and paper from his jailer, and signed a farewell message to her "From Your Valentine," a phrase that lived ever after.

Valentine was later named a Patron Saint, and spiritual overseer of an annual festival. The festival involved young Romans offering women they admired, and wished to court, handwritten greetings of affection on February 14. The greeting cards acquired St. Valentine's namesake and still has it.

Valentine's day grew in popularity along with Christianity, and is now celebrated all over the world, celebrated by almost all faiths. One of the earliest Valentine's cards was sent in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London. It is now showcased at the British Museum.

I only found out the origins of Valentine's Day today, and found it quite interesting. So what I decided to do was add a "Sex, Love, & Relationship" section to my main gift shop, and mark everything down up to 80% just through Valentine's day, just to make the Patron Saint happy. It can include a gift card and the customer does not have to sign it "From Your Valentine" but can if he/she wishes. I always put "Love, Ricky".