Valentine Day History- History of Valentines Day,Valentine's Day History

Valentine's Day is the 'day of love'. It falls on February 14 every year and is widely celebrated by people of all ages. Valentine's Day celebrates love in all its forms and is not restricted to romantic love. Hence, people celebrate this day by presenting Valentine's Day gifts to their parents, teachers, siblings, friends, sweethearts or anyone special or close to them. Exchanging cards, flowers and chocolates is the most common expression of love on Valentine's Day.

Popular Versions of The History of Valentine's Day
There are many accounts of how Valentine's Day came to be celebrated by people all over the world. We will discuss some of these,

Feast of Lupercal
This festival of love traces its origin to the ancient Roman Festival when the 'Feast of Lupercal' was celebrated in honor of the Roman God of Fertility. There used to be mutual exchange of love notes known as "valentines". According to a time worn custom, on the eve of Lupercalia (14th of Feb) a ritual of 'name drawing' was followed, in which a young man drew the name of a girl from the lot, who was to be his sweetheart for the whole year. Quite often, the couple would fall in love with each other and eventually get married. The custom lasted for a long time until people started feeling that the custom was un-Christian and that a mate should be chosen by sight.

Relevance of St. Valentine
The version which is more closer to the truth is in relation to the actions of a priest known as St. Valentine. During the reign of Emperor Claudius II Rome was involved in several unpopular campaigns and many families lost their sons, husbands and fathers during this period. Emperor Claudius came to understand that people did not wish to join the army since they did not wish to leave their families for war. A romantic priest St. Valentine defied his order. St. Valentine helped couples who were in love by getting them married secretly. He was killed on 14th Feb, about 270AD for defying the Emperor's orders. After his death Valentine was named a Saint. Since then St Valentine came to be known as the patron saint of lovers.

Another Version Associated with St. Valentine
As per another story, Valentine attempted to help Christians escape from the Roman prison as they were being tortured and beaten there. According to yet another version, Valentine fell in love with the jailer's daughter who then used to visit him during confinement. Before his death Valentine wrote a farewell letter to his sweetheart and signed it, ‘From your Valentine'. The expression became quite popular amongst love struck couples and is still very much in vogue.

Some Popular Facets of Valentines Day
Mating Season of Birds
Since early times people have held the belief that birds start looking for their mate from February 14. This notion has further helped in associating Valentine's day with love and romance.

Popularity of Valentines Day
Initially, the trend was to send handmade cards to our loved ones. But this changed in the beginning of the 19th century and mass-produced cards became popular. With passing time this day is increasingly become commercially popular across the world.

St. Valentine's Day Massacre
Valentine's Day Massacre is considered to be one of the most widely publicised incident of gang war in history. This infamous incident was a result of the rivalry between two notorious criminal gangs of Chicago. Al ‘Scarface' Capone led the Italian mafia group and George 'Bugs' Moran was the head of the other gang. On February 14, 1929, a well planned massacre was executed inside a warehouse located at 2122 N. Clark Street, where seven of Moran's men lost their lives. What comes across as strange is the fact that even though this massacre was talked about in public for a long time but nobody was ever booked for the incident.

Al Capone devised a ghastly plan for the Valentine's Day massacre. The motive behind this plan was to eliminate arch rival Moran. And the plan was to influence Moran and his gang to visit a warehouse on North Clark Street on the pretext of buying some whiskey at a cheap price. At that time a team of six men in the disguise of police officers would conduct a routine raid and enter the warehouse. During this time Capone was to be away from the scene.

As per plan, Capone's men entered the warehouse. Two of them dressed as police officers while the remaining four in plain clothes. The two policemen asked Moran's gang members to line up facing the wall. Moran's gang consiting of seven members followed the instructions thinking them to be a harmless and routine police raid.Capone's men took advantage of this guise and killed Capone's gang members with Thompson submachine guns.

In order to leave the place without raising suspicion, the men in plain clothes marched out of the warehouse with their hands raised. Those dressed in police uniform walked behind them. This gave an appearance of the police having caught the bootleggers.

However the massacre had missed the prime target Moran. When Moran was about to reach the crime scene, he had retraced his steps seeing the police vehicles pulling up near the warehouse.

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