Feb 15, 2007 8:39 am US/Central
Good Question: Is Valentine's A Hallmark Holiday?
by Ben Tracy
(WCCO)
Money may not buy love, unless of course it's Valentine's Day. This year, we spent nearly $17 billion on those flowers, chocolates and dinner bills.
"I do like Valentine's Day," said one woman in the Twin Cities.
However, some of us suspect this holiday was simply invented to sell stuff.
"I feel like less of a man because Valentine's Day is always so hyped up and I don't know what to buy," said one man in Minneapolis.
"I think its all fake," said another woman. "It's not a real holiday."
This day of love and romance does have history. It goes back to the pagan fertility celebration of Lupercalia during the Middle Ages. Back then, they believed birds paired up for mating on Feb. 15, so they figured the night before, humans should as well.
But what about St. Valentine? He was the patron saint of lovers, and his story took hold when the church tried to crush the pagan celebrations. Valentine was a Christian martyr jailed in The Tower of London. He befriended the jailers' blind daughter. The night before he was killed he wrote her a letter signed "Your Valentine."
The first commercially produced valentines first hit the U.S. in the 1840s thanks to a woman named Esther Howland. Hallmark was founded 70 years later.
While Valentine's Day is not an "invented" holiday, it certainly has been changed by the mass-marketing that now surrounds it.
(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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