The Truth Behind Valentine's Day !

Hi,

Just two days left for a big gala day! Yes its a Valentines Day.

It is not true that Valentine's day is a holiday invented by greedy greeting card companies eager to sell more stock or by candy companies to sell more chocolate, or general retailers to create more business once Christmas is over. It is easy to imagine that Valentine's Day was created by them because as soon as the stores put away their Christmas merchandise, out comes the Valentine's Day items - even though Valentine's is still more than six weeks away.

In a blink Rudolph and Santa are replaced with red ribbon and pink hearts and mass produced Valentine's Day cards in thousands of designs and sizes - large, small, serious, silly, inexpensive, expensive, musical (my least favorite because they sound so tinny) and traditional ones. Valentine's Day is the biggest single twenty hour period for florists, a huge event for greeting card companies and a boon for candy
makers.

Valentine's Day began more than 1,500 years ago. According to legend, Valentine was a priest who performed marriages in continued defiance of the orders of the Roman emperor Claudius. The emperor had realized that no young men wanted to join his army and then leave their wives and sweethearts. When it was discovered that Valentine was still performing marriages in secret, he was cruelly sentenced to death.

Valentine allegedly cured the jailer's daughter of blindness and on the night before his execution, he sent a note to her signed "from your Valentine". Reportedly he died on February. 14, 269 A.D.

More than 200 years later in 496 A.D., February 14 was named by Pope Gelasius to honor St. Valentine. Today more than 1,700 years have passed since the real Valentine died, and people are still celebrating Valentine's Day in a big way. A staggering 180 million Valentine's cards were sold last year.

It may never have occurred to you that Valentine's Day is a major crisis day for anyone who is having an affair. After all, Valentine's Day is the one holiday when everyone is expected to do something romantic for their spouse or lover -- and if someone has both, it's a serious problem and a logistic nightmare.

Ashitha..