Happy St. Valentine's day to everyone who is in love with somebody. As usually, I'm alone, so I have enough time to research about the history of this day as well as some curious facts about it, since I don't have to spend the whole afternoon looking for a present to make my girlfriend happy. As you can see, I'm totally a hater of this day.
So, this holiday has origins in the Roman festival of Lupercalia, held in mid-February. The festival, which celebrated the coming of spring, included fertility rites and the pairing off of women with men by lottery. At the end of the 5th century, Pope Gelasius I replaced Lupercalia with St. Valentine’s Day. It came to be celebrated as a day of romance from about the 14th century. Formal messages, or valentines, appeared in the 1500s, and by the late 1700s commercially printed cards were being used. Valentines commonly depict Cupid, the Roman god of love, along with hearts. Traditional gifts include candy and flowers, particularly red roses, a symbol of beauty and love.
Saint Valentine's day is popular in almost every country in the world, and it is celebrated in several ways. In Philippines, for example, it is the most common wedding anniversary, and mass weddings of hundreds of couples at the same time are not uncommon on that date. This picture shows one of these massive weddings in Bacoor, Philippines:
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