Looking for Love

*188 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged annually, making Valentine’s Day the second-most popular greeting-card-giving occasion. (This total excludes packaged kids valentines for classroom exchanges.)

*Over 50 percent of all Valentine’s Day cards are purchased in the six days prior to the observance, making Valentine’s Day a procrastinator’s delight.

*Research reveals that more than half of the U.S. population celebrates Valentine’s Day by purchasing a greeting card.

*There are 119 single men (i.e., never married, widowed or divorced) who are in their 20s for every 100 single women of the same ages. Corresponding numbers for the following race and ethnic groups are:
o Hispanics: 153 men per 100 women
o Asians (single race): 132 men per 100 women (This ratio is not significantly different from that for Hispanics or non-Hispanic whites.)
o Non-Hispanic whites (single race): 120 men per 100 women
o Blacks (single race): 92 men per 100 women (The numbers of black men and women in this age group are not significantly different from one another.)

*There are 34 single men (i.e., never married, widowed or divorced) age 65 or older for every 100 single women of the same ages. Corresponding numbers for the following race and ethnic groups are:
o Hispanics: 38 men per 100 women
o Non-Hispanic whites (single race): 33 men per 100 women
o Blacks (single race): 33 men per 100 women
o Asians (single race): 28 men per 100 women
o (Note: None of the ratios for the individual groups differ significantly from one another nor from the ratio for all people age 65 or older.)

*904: The number of dating service establishments nationwide as of 2002. These establishments, which include Internet dating services, employed nearly 4,300 people and pulled in $489 million in revenues.

Be Mine

*2.2 million marriages take place in the United States annually. That breaks down to more than 6,000 a day.

*147,300 marriages are performed in Nevada during 2005. So many couples “tie the knot” in the Silver State that it ranked fourth nationally in marriages, even though it’s total population that year among states was 35th.

*The estimated U.S. median ages at first marriage for women and men are 25.3 and 27.1 respectively, in 2005. The age for women rose 4.2 years in the last three decades. The age for men at first marriage is up 3.6 years.

*Men and women in northeastern states generally have a higher median age at first marriage than the national average. In Massachusetts, for example, women were a median of 27.4 years old and men 29.1 years of age at first marriage. States where people typically marry young include Utah, where women were a median of 21.9 years and men, 23.9 years.

*57% and 60% of American women and men, respectively, are 15 or older and currently married (includes those who are separated).

*72%: The percentage of men and women ages 30 to 34 in 2005 who had been married at some point in their lives – either currently or formerly.

*4.9 million opposite-sex cohabitating couples maintained households in 2005. These couples comprised 4.3 percent of all households.

Candy is Dandy!

*1,241: The number of locations producing chocolate and cocoa products in 2004. These establishments employed 43,322 people. California led the nation in the number of such establishments with 136, followed by Pennsylvania with 122.

*515 locations produced nonchocolate confectionary products in 2004. These establishments employed 22,234 people.

*The total value of shipments in 2004 for firms producing chocolate and cocoa products was $13.9 billion. Nonchocolate confectionery product manufacturing, meanwhile, was a $5.7 billion industry.

*3,467 Number of confectionery and nut stores in the United States in 2004. Often referred to as candy stores, they are among the best sources of sweets for Valentine’s Day.

*The per capita consumption of candy by Americans in 2005 was 25.7 pounds. Candy consumption has actually declined over the last few years; in 1997, each American gobbled or savored more than 27 pounds of candy a year.

Flowers

*The combined wholesale value of domestically produced cut flowers in 2005 for all flower-producing operations with $100,000 or more in sales was $397 million. Among states, California was the leading producer, alone accounting for nearly three-quarters of this amount ($289 million).

*The combined wholesale value of domestically produced cut roses in 2005 for all operations with $100,000 or more in sales was $39 million. Among all types of cut flowers, roses were third in receipts ($39 million)to lilies ($76.9 million) and tulips ($39.1 million).

*There were 21,667 florists nationwide in 2004. These businesses employed 109,915 people.

Jewelry

*There were 28,772 jewelry stores in the United States in 2004. Jewelry stores offer engagement, wedding and other rings to lovers of all ages. In February 2006, these stores sold $2.6 billion worth of merchandise. (This figure has not been adjusted for seasonal variation, holiday or trading day differences or price changes).
The merchandise at these locations could well have been produced at one of the nation’s 1,864 jewelry manufacturing establishments. The manufacture of jewelry was an $9 billion industry in 2004.

Postime te Ngjashme:

• The History of Valentine’s Day
• Finding love on a deadline
• Keep fine by 40 years
• How To Choose an Engagement Ring
• Great Romances

Sappho

Much uncertainty surrounds the life story of the celebrated Greek lyric poet Sappho, a woman Plato called “the tenth Muse.” Born around 610 B.C. on the island of Lesbos, now part of Greece, she was said to have been married to Cercylas, a wealthy man. Many legends have long existed about Sappho’s life, including a prevalent one — now believed to be untrue — that she leaped into the sea to her death because of her unrequited love of a younger man, the sailor Phaon. It is not known how much work she published during her lifetime, but by the 8th or 9th century Sappho’s known work was limited to quotations made by other authors. In the majority of her poems, Sappho wrote about love — and the accompanying emotions of hatred, anger and jealousy — among the members of her largely young and female circle. Sappho gave her female acolytes educational and religious instruction as part of the preparation for marriage; the group was dedicated to and inspired by Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. Her focus on the relationships between women and girls has led many to assume that Sappho was a lesbian — a word derived from the island and the communities of women that lived there — but it is also true that the existence of strong emotions and attractions between members of the same sex was considered far more common and less taboo than in later years.

Vatsyayana, author of the Kama Sutra

This ascetic, probably celibate scholar who lived in classical India (around the 5th century A.D.) is an unlikely candidate to have written history’s best known book on erotic love. Little is known about Vatsyayana’s life, but in his famous book — actually a collection of notes on hundreds of years of spiritual wisdom passed down by the ancient sages — he wrote that he intended the Kama Sutra as the ultimate love manual and a tribute to Kama, the Indian god of love. Though it has become famous for its sections on sexual instruction, the book actually deals much more with the pursuit of fulfilling relationships, and provided a blueprint for courtship and marriage in upper-class Indian society at the time. In addition to his classic work on love, Vatsyayana also transcribed the Nyaya Sutras, an ancient philosophical text composed by Gautama in the 2nd century B.C. that examined questions of logic and epistemology. The Kama Sutra has been translated into hundreds of languages and has won millions of devotees around the world.

Shah Jahan

Emperor of India from 1628 to 1658, Shah Jahan has gone down in history for commissioning one of history’s most spectacular buildings, the Taj Mahal, in honor of his much beloved wife. Born Prince Khurram, the fifth son of the Emperor Jahangir of India, he became his father’s favored son after leading several successful military campaigns to consolidate his family’s empire. As a special honor, Jahangir gave him the title of Shah Jahan, or “King of the World.” After his father’s death in 1627, Shah Jahan won power after a struggle with his brothers, crowning himself emperor at Agra in 1628. At his side was Mumtaz Mahal, or “Chosen One of the Palace,” Shah Jahan’s wife since 1612 and the favorite of his three queens. In 1631, Mumtaz died after giving birth to the couple’s 14th child. Legend has it that with her dying breaths, she asked her husband to promise to build the world’s most beautiful mausoleum for her. Six months after her death, the deeply grieving emperor ordered construction to begin. Set across the Jamuna River from the royal palace in Agra, the white marble fade of the Taj Mahal reflects differing hues of light throughout the day, glowing pink at sunrise and pearly white in the moonlight. At its center, surrounded by delicate screens filtering light, lies the cenotaph, or coffin, containing the remains of the Shah’s beloved queen.

Giacomo Casanova

The name “Casanova” has long since come to conjure up the romantic image of the prototypical libertine and seducer, thanks to the success of Giacomo Casanova’s posthumously published 12-volume autobiography, Histoire de ma vie, which chronicled with vivid detail — as well as some exaggeration — his many sexual and romantic exploits in 18th-century Europe. Born in Venice in 1725 to actor parents, Casanova was expelled from a seminary for scandalous conduct and embarked on a varied career, including a stint working for a cardinal in Rome, as a violinist, and as a magician, while traveling all around the continent. Fleeing from creditors, he changed his name to Chevalier de Seingalt, under which he published a number of literary works, most importantly his autobiography. Casanova’s celebration of pleasure seeking and much-professed love of women — he maintained that a woman’s conversation was at least as captivating as her body — made him the leading champion of a movement towards sexual freedom, and the model for the famous Don Juan of literature. After working as a diplomat in Berlin, Russia, and Poland and a spy for the Venetian inquisitors, Casanova spent the final years of his life working on his autobiography in the library of a Bohemian count. He died in 1798.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The only child of the famous feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the philosopher and novelist William Godwin, both influential voices in Romantic-Era England, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin fell in love with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley when she was only 16; he was 21 and unhappily married. In the summer of 1816, the couple was living with Shelley’s friend and fellow poet, the dashing and scandalous Lord Byron, in Byron’s villa in Switzerland when Mary came up with the idea for what would become her masterpiece — and one of the most famous novels in history — Frankenstein (1818). After Shelley’s wife committed suicide, he and Mary were married, but public hostility to the match forced them to move to Italy. When Mary was only 24, Percy Shelley was caught in a storm while at sea and drowned, leaving her alone with a two-year-old son (three previous children had died young). Alongside her husband, Byron, and John Keats, Mary was one of the principal members of the second generation of Romanticism; unlike the three poets, who all died during the 1820s, she lived long enough to see the dawn of a new era, the Victorian Age. Still somewhat of a social outcast for her liaison with Shelley, she worked as a writer to support her father and son, and maintained connections to the artistic, literary and political circles of London until her death in 1851.

Richard Wagner

One of history’s most revered composers, Richard Wagner set his work on the famous Ring cycle aside in 1858 to work on his most romantic opera, Tristan and Isolde. He was inspired to do so partially because of his thwarted passion for Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of a wealthy silk merchant and patron of Wagner’s. While at work on the opera, the unhappily married Wagner met Cosima von Bulow, daughter of the celebrated pianist and composer Franz Liszt and wife of Hans von Bulow, one of Liszt’s disciples. They later became lovers, and their relationship was an open secret in the music world for several years. Wagner’s wife died in 1866, but Cosima was still married and the mother of two children with von Bulow, who knew of the relationship and worshiped Wagner’s music (he even conducted the premiere of Tristan and Isolde). After having two daughters, Isolde and Eva, by Wagner, Cosima finally left her husband; she and Wagner married and settled into an idyllic villa in Switzerland, near Lucerne. On Cosima’s 33rd birthday, Christmas Day 1870, Wagner brought an orchestra in to play a symphony he had written for her, named the Triebschen Idyll after their villa. Though the music was later renamed the Siegfried Idyll after the couple’s son, the supremely romantic gesture was a powerful symbol of the strength of Wagner and Cosima’s marriage, which lasted until the composer’s death in 1883.

King Edward VIII

Edward, then Prince of Wales, was introduced to Wallis Simpson in 1931, when she was married to her second husband; they soon began a relationship that would rock Britain’s most prominent institutions — Parliament, the monarchy and the Church of England — to their cores. Edward called Simpson, whom others criticized as a financially unstable social climber, “the perfect woman.” Just months after being crowned king in January 1936, after the death of his father, George V, Edward proposed to Simpson, precipitating a huge scandal and prompting Britain’s prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, to say he would resign if the marriage went ahead. Not wanting to push his country into an electoral crisis, but unwilling to give Simpson up, Edward made the decision to abdicate the throne. In a public radio address, he told the world of his love for Simpson, saying that “I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.” Married and given the titles of Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the couple lived in exile in France, where they became fixtures of cafe society.

Edith Piaf

Though her life was marked by sickness, tragedy and other hardships from beginning to end, the famous French chanteuse with the throaty voice became the epitome of classic Parisian-style romance for her legions of fans. Born Edith Giovanna Gassion in 1915, she was abandoned by her mother and reared by her grandmother; while traveling with her father, a circus acrobat, she began singing for pennies on the street. Discovered by a cabaret promoter who renamed her Piaf, or “sparrow,” (and was later brutally murdered), Edith enjoyed a meteoric rise to stardom and by 1935 was singing in the grandest concert halls in Paris. Piaf was married twice, but her great love was the boxer Marcel Cerdan, a world middleweight champion who was killed in a plane crash en route from Europe to New York in 1949. It was for Cerdan that Piaf sang the achingly romantic “Hymne a l’amour,” celebrated all over the world as one of her best loved ballads. After a near lifelong struggle with drug and alcohol addictions, Piaf died of liver cancer on the French Riviera in 1963. Her grave is one of the most visited in Paris’s world famous Pere Lachaise cemetery.

Kathleen Woodiwiss

Born in 1939 in Alexandria, Louisiana, Kathleen Woodiwiss was a young wife and mother when she began writing romantic fiction as a response to her dissatisfaction with the existing “women’s fiction” of the time. In 1972, she published her first novel, The Flame and the Flower, set on a Southern plantation in the late 18th century. Its historical setting and theme, florid prose style and steamy sex scenes inspired a legion of imitators, and its smashing commercial success sparked a new boom in romance fiction. Woodiwiss was given credit for inventing the modern romance novel in its current form: thick period melodramas packed with an array of dashing and dangerous men and bosomy women in low-cut dresses. She herself wrote 13 of these so-called “bodice-rippers,” including “Shanna” (1977), “A Rose in Winter” (1982), “Come Love a Stranger” (1984) and “The Reluctant Suitor” (2003). In an interview with Publisher’s Weekly, Woodiwiss firmly denied the characterization of her books as erotic, maintaining that she wrote only “love stories, — with a little spice.” By the time of her death in 2006, Woodiwiss’s spicy love stories had sold more than 36 million copies in 13 countries.

Elizabeth Taylor

An actress since early childhood, the dark haired, violet-eyed Elizabeth Taylor has won two Best Actress Oscars (for Butterfield 8 in 1960 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966) but is perhaps best known for her rare beauty — and her epic love life. She has been married a total of eight times — twice to the same man, the actor Richard Burton, whom she has called “one of the two great loves of my life.” The first was the film producer Mike Todd, who died in a plane crash in 1958. Taylor and Burton met on the set of Cleopatra, when both were married to other people; their affair soon made headlines around the world and earned a public rebuke from no lesser authority than the Vatican. Their own married life together was a study in extremes, soaked in alcohol and characterized by a passion that was no less intense when they were fighting than when they were getting along. After divorcing in 1973, they found it impossible to stay apart and remarried in 1975, only to break up four months later. Barred from Burton’s funeral in 1984 by his last wife, Taylor still received legions of condolences, honoring her and Burton’s place in the pantheon of history’s most celebrated love stories.

Postime te Ngjashme:

• Valentine’s Day: Quotations
• Finding love on a deadline
• Great Romances
• The History of Valentine’s Day
• Your Ceremony … a Reflection of Your Values

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

- Aristotle

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

- Lao Tzu

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.

- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.

- Henry Ward Beecher

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.

- Anais Nin

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Love has no desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires;
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

-Helen Keller

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.

- Zora Neale Hurston

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.

- Leo Tolstoy

Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.

- Dorothy Parker

I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

- Alice Walker

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

- Pablo Neruda, “Love Sonnet XVII”

Postime te Ngjashme:

• Finding love on a deadline
• Your Ceremony … a Reflection of Your Values
• Your Bridal Bouquet
• Great Romances
• The History of Valentine’s Day

The Trumans

He first saw her in Sunday school when he was six years old and she was just five. “She had golden curls and beautiful blue eyes,” he recalled. They graduated from high school together in 1901, but went their separate ways — he moved to Kansas City and she to Colorado for a year — until becoming reacquainted nine years later. It was then that Truman, who once wrote of Bess, “I thought she was the most beautiful and the sweetest person on earth,” began his first and longest campaign — to win the heart of Bess Wallace.

Bess lived in her family home in Independence, Missouri. Harry was a hard-working farmer from Grandview, twenty miles away. So he courted her, in part, by mail. Their correspondence would continue for nearly fifty years — an exciting ride through nine years of courtship, fifty-three years of marriage, family, career changes, and political fortunes that thrust them to the very center of the world stage. More than 1300 letters from Harry to Bess Truman survive in the Truman Library collections.

Sadly, most of her letters to him have been lost to history. After showering Bess with attention and letters for more than a year, Harry proposed to her in 1911, but she turned him down. He persisted, and eventually she fell in love with him. He had a standing invitation to dinner at the Wallace home on Sundays, often sleeping across the street, afterwards, on the floor of his cousins’ house because travel between Grandview and Independence was arduous. To win her favor — she was from a wealthy family — and better his prospects, he entered into a series of business ventures — mining, drilling for oil, and other speculations — most ending in disappointment. Although he also served as Grandview postmaster and as a county road overseer, his future remained uncertain.
When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Harry Truman joined a Missouri National Guard field artillery regiment. Federalized as the 129th Field Artillery Regiment of the 35th Division, the unit trained for combat in Oklahoma. Arriving in France in April 1918, he had additional training before taking command of Battery D, a unit known for rowdiness and intransigence. He won respect for his leadership and courage under fire, seeing action in the Vosges Forest, the Meuse-Argonne offensive, and near Verdun. Throughout his military service, Truman carried Bess Wallace’s picture in his breast pocket. Writing to her frequently, his spirits were buoyed by her promise to marry him upon his safe return.

Harry Truman returned from World War I determined to make changes in his life. He and Bess Wallace married in June 1919 and moved into the Wallace family home. In 1922, Truman entered politics with his election as a Jackson County judge, serving all but two years until 1934. The birth of their daughter Mary Margaret in 1924 brought joy and fulfillment to the Trumans, and her childhood coincided with the growth of Harry Truman’s reputation and political career.

Harry Truman jumped at the chance to run for the U.S. Senate when it was offered to him in 1934. Elected, he served for what he called “the happiest ten years of my life.”

He soon built a reputation for hard work and dedication, concentrating on transportation and interstate commerce during his first term and investigating the national defense program in his second term. Loyal to the New Deal, but also accepted by more conservative party members, Truman became Franklin Roosevelt’s vice-presidential running mate in 1944. During these years, Bess Truman often returned to Independence for extended periods, leaving the Senator lonely in Washington, but giving them both an incentive to correspond in lengthy and endearing letters.

On April 12, 1945, with the death of FDR, Truman was thrust unexpectedly into the presidency, but soon adjusted to the awesome responsibility that had been placed on his shoulders. The end of World War II, the use of the atomic bomb, the establishment of the United Nations and the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall plan, and the beginning of the Korean War are just some of the momentous events he would preside over during his eight years in office. Living in the White House, and in the Blair House during the White House renovation from 1948 to 1952, the Trumans were a close-knit family that preferred not to entertain extensively or to hold grand state dinners. When he traveled or when she was away in Independence, Harry and Bess Truman continued to correspond on an almost daily basis in letters containing warmth, gossip, humor, and insight on world events. As they had both grown up around the turn of the century, they preferred writing letters to making phone calls, and used notes to keep abreast of each other’s lives as well as to remind each other of their affection.

Typical of their relationship, they wrote to each other whenever circumstances kept them apart on June 28th, the anniversary of their marriage. Often they even wrote these anniversary notes when they were together, hand-delivering the letters to each other. These anniversary letters changed little over time, showing the same devotion after decades of marriage that they had shown from the beginning of their union. Click here for samples of the Trumans’ legendary correspondence and journey with them from Missouri in the early years of their courtship to the White House in the waning days of World War II.

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Every February, across the country, candy, flowers, and gifts are exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine. But who is this mysterious saint and why do we celebrate this holiday? The history of Valentine’s Day — and its patron saint — is shrouded in mystery. But we do know that February has long been a month of romance. St. Valentine’s Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. So, who was Saint Valentine and how did he become associated with this ancient rite? Today, the Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.

One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men — his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons where they were often beaten and tortured.

According to one legend, Valentine actually sent the first ‘valentine’ greeting himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl — who may have been his jailor’s daughter — who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed ‘From your Valentine,’ an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories certainly emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic, and, most importantly, romantic figure. It’s no surprise that by the Middle Ages, Valentine was one of the most popular saints in England and France.

While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial — which probably occurred around 270 A.D — others claim that the Christian church may have decided to celebrate Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to ‘christianize’ celebrations of the pagan Lupercalia festival. In ancient Rome, February was the official beginning of spring and was considered a time for purification. Houses were ritually cleansed by sweeping them out and then sprinkling salt and a type of wheat called spelt throughout their interiors. Lupercalia, which began at the ides of February, February 15, was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.
To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at the sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would then sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification.

The boys then sliced the goat’s hide into strips, dipped them in the sacrificial blood and took to the streets, gently slapping both women and fields of crops with the goathide strips. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed being touched with the hides because it was believed the strips would make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would then each choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage. Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day around 498 A.D. The Roman ‘lottery’ system for romantic pairing was deemed un-Christian and outlawed. Later, during the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of February — Valentine’s Day — should be a day for romance. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. The greeting, which was written in 1415, is part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England. Several years later, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.

In Great Britain, Valentine’s Day began to be popularly celebrated around the seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth century, it was common for friends and lovers in all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes. By the end of the century, printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology. Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one’s feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine’s Day greetings. Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began to sell the first mass-produced valentines in America.

According to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated one billion valentine cards are sent each year, making Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. (An estimated 2.6 billion cards are sent for Christmas.)

Approximately 85 percent of all valentines are purchased by women. In addition to the United States, Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia.

Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages (written Valentine’s didn’t begin to appear until after 1400), and the oldest known Valentine card is on display at the British Museum. The first commercial Valentine’s Day greeting cards produced in the U.S. were created in the 1840s by Esther A. Howland. Howland, known as the Mother of the Valentine, made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as “scrap”.

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