SinglesByChoice.com

As Linda Sherman points out on her blog, there is no global definition for Valentine’s Day. Traditions are different by country, and some probably have never even heard about it. Reading Linda’s post, I started to wonder: where did Valentine’s Day come from? Is it a Hallmark holiday or something more profound? Apparently, the holiday is in honor of St. Valentine - it’s an old Christian holiday absorbing fertility holidays from other religions (as with all the Christian holidays, it just happens to be around the time when a non-Christian holiday was…). It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that people started exchanging Valentine’s greetings. According to Wikipedia’s entry, Valentine’s Day follows Christmas in card-sending volume.

Back in the 1400s, a Court of Love was established on Valentine’s Day, which was the first recorded celebration of V-Day. And then it disappeared again from public conscience only to be resurrected in the 1840s. It took the entrepreneurial spirit of the US to commercialize it. Interestingly, it was exchanges of cards that made up Valentine’s Day celebrations. Only in the 1980s, did the diamond industry start adding diamond giving to the mix, which had expanded from cards to chocolates and flowers.

I would argue, although it has some religious roots, Valentine’s Day has certainly been turned into a huge commercial enterprise. To celebrate it or International Quirkyalone Day in a more traditional way, we could simply express our love with a note - that would also express our love for mother earth.