The Origins of Valentine's Day - Valentin (St. Valentine's Day)

The legend of Saint Valentine. There is some doubt as to the true identity of Saint Valentine, and in fact it is possible that there were as many of three Valentines. However, the legend is as follows: Valentine was a holy priest in Rome, who, with St. Marius and his family, assisted the martyrs in the persecution under Claudius II.
     Emperor Claudius II of Rome attempted to abolish marriage because he felt married men did not make good soldiers as they wanted to stay at home with wives and families and not go off to war. Consequently Valentine, a local priest, then married couples secretly. The Emperor learned of this and Valentine was apprehended, and sent by the emperor to the  prefect of Rome, who, on finding all his promises to make him renounce his faith in effectual, commended him to be beaten with clubs, and afterwards, to be beheaded, which was executed on February 14, about the year 270.

     Some say that this is probably only a popular legend, and the customs more likely to be of Pagan origins. There is generally no smoke without fire......and both may be true. Further we have found that there are actually two Saint Valentines whose feast day is on February 14th. The second was a Bishop of Terni, or possibly Teramo, Italy, who was martyred two or three years later.

 Pope Julius I is said to have built a church near Ponte Mole to he memory, which for a long time gave name to the gate now called Porta del Popolo, formerly, Porta Valetini. The greatest part of his relics are now in the church of St. Praxedes. His name is celebrated as that of an illustrious martyr in the sacramentary of St. Gregory, the Roman Missal of Thomasius, in the calendar of F. Fronto and that of Allatius, in Bede, Usuard, Ado, Notker and all other martyrologies on this day. To abolish the heathens lewd superstitious custom of boys drawing the names of girls and pairing off for illicit sex, in honor of their goddess Februata Juno, on the fifteenth of this month, several zealous pastors substituted the names of saints in billets given on this day.

 As Rome became more Christian, the priests moved the spring holiday from the 15th of February to the 14th - Valentine's Day. Now the holiday honored Saint Valentine instead of Lupercus

Lupercalia theory. The Pagan customs of Valentine's Day may go back to the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, which was held annually on February 15th and honored Lupercus, the god of fertility, woodlands, and pastures. In the early days of Rome, fierce wolves roamed the woods nearby. The Romans called upon one of their gods, Lupercus, to keep the wolves away. The festival was celebrated as a spring festival. Their calendar was different at that time, with February falling in early springtime. The customs of Lupercalia included boys drawing girls' names from a box, on the eve of the festival of Lupercalia the names of Roman girls were written on slips of paper and placed into jars. Each young man drew a slip. The girl whose name was chosen was to be his sweetheart which would pair them off as couples for the year. In 494 [496?] AD, Bishop Gelasius replaced Lupercalia with the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, also known as Candlemas. Old Candlemas Day was celebrated on February 14th, but is now observed on the second.

Mating season theory. An alternate theory for the origin of the customs is that it is derived from the mating season for birds. It was popularly believed in medieval England and France that at the start of the second fortnight in February that the birds begin to mate. Similarly in India at that time it is the season of beginning of the season of Vasant (Spring).

Essentially Valentine's Day has nothing to do with Vedik culture, has nothing to do with culture for that matter, and is just a huge commercial spin-off of Western materialistic society. To some it may seem harmless, but in reality the entire thing has become something centered around the gross bodily concept of life and about sucking the public into commercialism much like Mother's Day and Father's Day and Xmas. Western economists and industrialists are very expert at exploiting the people through use of guilt and intimidation - if you don't send a card a present or something, and all your family and friends are getting and sending, then you are somewhat an inferior being. The reality of it all - it is all non-sense. They just want your money.

The God of Amorous Desire - from BeliefNet:

Valentine's Day a form of cultural corruption:
ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthee Parishad) set to disrupt Valentine’s Day celebrations in Orissa:

Banned in Saudi Arabia as a "religious innovations" that Islam doesn't support:

More on V day HERE:

BUT HAVING SAID ALL THAT, and you still want to know where you can send a card from, etc., then you have a couple of choices; go to our e-cards section and find the one you want to send, or go here and do the same from the My Dear Valentine's.com site.