Tena StetlerAuthor of Paranormal Romance/Suspense & Cozy Mysteries With Magic Spark!

Feb 6th Was Saint Valentine’s Day Started by the Candy Companies?

It’s February, the month of love. Right? Valentines Day and all that fun stuff. The answer to my question is a resounding NO.  The history of Valentine’s Day actually finds its roots in ancient Rome and Victorian England, and it’s not as rosy as you might want to believe.

The Catholic church has records of at least three different martyrs named Valentine or Valentinus. One of them, a priest in third-century Rome, defied the emperor Claudius when he decided to outlaw marriage for young men. Valentine continued performing marriage ceremonies for the lovers in secret, and Claudius had him killed for it when he found out.

Another Valentine supposedly helped Christians escape from prison, and was also martyred for it. Yet another one is said to have sent the first “Valentine” letter from prison, allegedly to the jailor’s daughter. Legend has it, he signed the note, “from your Valentine,” a greeting we still use today.

Whichever saint the holiday memorializes, we generally agree he was kind, heroic and most importantly, very much pro-love.

Another thought, historians believe that Valentine’s Day commemorates the death of St. Valentine on February 14, others believe that the holiday actually has its origins in a Pagan fertility festival called “Lupercalia,” which was celebrated on February 15 in ancient Rome. Dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, and Roman founders Romulus and Remus

Now lets turn to today Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, Australia and the United States, although it’s most common in the U.K. and the U.S. Americans likely began exchanging handmade cards in the early 1700s. But it was the 1840’s when Esther A. Howland really changed the game. She began selling the first mass-produced cards in the country. Known as the “Mother of the Valentine,” she created elaborate pieces of art that had real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as “scrap.”

Now how about Cupid? According to Time, the figure can actually be traced all the way back to 700 B.C., to the Greek god of love named Eros, who was actually a handsome, immortal man with the intimidating power to make people fall in love.

Now about the flowers, giving red roses may be an obvious romantic gesture today, but it wasn’t until the late 17th century that giving flowers became a popular custom.

The practice can be traced back to when King Charles II of Sweden learned the “language of flowers” — which pairs different flowers with specific meanings — on a trip to Persia, and subsequently introduced the tradition to Europe.

A whopping 250 million roses are grown in preparation for Valentine’s Day each year. Whew, that’s a lot of roses!

While a red rose has traditionally symbolized love, many other colors like deep pink, purple or white, which symbolize happiness, royalty and sympathy respectively, may be given on the holiday too. Personally, I love the bright yellow universally known as symbols of friendship or the deep purple used for symbolizing love at first sight. Yep is was love at first sight between my hubby and I.

Also, people spend millions of dollars on gifts for their pets. I slowly raise my hand. I just purchased a shredder toy for my parrot, and a squeaky toy for my dog.  So I’m among the American households spent an estimated $751.3 million on gifts for their pets on Valentine’s Day. WOW!

The most popular gift of all, Candy. The first heart-shaped box of chocolates was introduced in 1861 created by Richard Cadbury. Today, more than 36 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolates are sold each year. That’s 58 million pounds of chocolate!

Did you know that conversational hearts got their start as medical lozenges? Strangely, the story of conversation hearts began in 1847 when a Boston pharmacist named Oliver Chase invented a machine that simplified the way medical lozenges are made. The result was America’s first candy-making machine, because the pharmacist soon started shifting his focus from making lozenges to candy instead!

In 1866, Daniel Chase, brother of Oliver, devised a way to press words onto the candy lozenges, using a felt roller pad moistened with vegetable coloring (usually red). These conversational candies were not heart-shaped until 1902.

The candy lozenges became what we know today as Necco wafers.  After acquisition of Stark Candy Company in 1990, Necco claims to produce about 100,000 pounds of Sweethearts every day, ramping up mid-September to meet the demand for product on Valentines Day. It produces approximately 8 billion candy hearts each year popular for other events as well such as weddings. That’s a lot of candy hearts.  Myself, I like the sweet-tart candy hearts.

Well, there you have it’s just like love, complex yet so simple — Happy Valentine’s Day.

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