Valentines Day - Fab or Mad

Hmmm.Valentines day is around the corner once again.

This legend has been cleverly turned into a marketing ploy to masses of unsuspecting victims. On Valentines day it is customary to give your loved one or an admirer, secret or public show of affection through gifts. In todays very modernistic society we feel obligated to share in this legend with our loved ones, even if we don't know the actual story behind it. Marketing psychology influences the mass market to buy lavish or simple presents for a special loved one. From flowers to expensive jewelry, heart shape chocolates, roses, teddy bears, holidays away, love cards... anything and everything.

Here is the legendary story!!!:

Legenda Aurea has sill no real connection with sentimental love. Tales past down to modern times portray Valentine as a priest who refused a law attributed to Roman Emperor Claudius II, ordering that young men remain single. The Emperor supposedly did this to grow his army, believing that married men did not make for good soldiers. The priest Valentine, however, secretly performed marriage ceremonies for young men. When Claudius found out about this, he had Valentine arrested and thrown in jail. In an embellishment to The Golden Legend, on the evening before Valentine was to be executed, he wrote the first "valentine" himself, addressed to a young girl variously identified as his beloved, as the jailer's daughter whom he had befriended and healed, or both. It was a note that read "From your Valentine. (Wikipedia)

So there you have it! I just learned something new and confirmed something old.