Look up Valentine or valentine in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. A valentine is a card or gift given on Valentine’s Day, or one’s sweetheart. If an internal link led valentine’s day gifts flowers and chocolate here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

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Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Catholic Education Resource Center – History of St. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Alternate titles: Saint Valentine’s Day, St. Valentine’s Day is a holiday when lovers express their affection with greetings and gifts. The holiday has expanded to express affection between relatives and friends.

Valentine’s Day is celebrated annually on February 14. The festival, which celebrated the coming of spring, included fertility rites and the pairing off of women with men by lottery. Gelasius I forbid the celebration of Lupercalia and is sometimes attributed with replacing it with St. Valentine’s Day, but the true origin of the holiday is vague at best. Valentine’s Day did not come to be celebrated as a day of romance until about the 14th century. Valentine defied the emperor’s orders and secretly married couples to spare the husbands from war.