by Elle D

Created on: February 14, 2008   Last Updated: February 20, 2008

It's February and everywhere you go you are being bombarded with red hearts, pink teddy bears and paper cupids shooting arrows. They have become the symbols to remind us, just in case it slipped our minds, Valentine's Day is coming. No chance of that ever happening, right? Grocery stores, gas stations, drug stores, and even my neighborhood cleaners are now in on it.

I doubt if anyone still even remembers that this all started in Rome as a result of a clergyman named Valentine who was executed for secretly marrying military personnel against the Emperor's orders. The Emperor believed that marriage made the soldiers weak in battle (much like the NFL or NBA feel about a player consummating with their wives or girlfriends before a big game-talk about an archaic rule). Later, in A.D. 496, Pope Gelasius set aside February 14th as the Christian holiday to honor this man of the cloth for his bravery, and he became the patron saint for lovers. Now centuries later it has become known as the day to express and exchange love messages. Creating and marketing the first valentine card was first credited to Esther Howland, of Massachusetts, back in the 1840's, which she turned into a lucrative home-based business, (grossing a whopping $100k annually), and then sold to George C. Whitney, who later was responsible for adding the verse to the cards.

Today the American Greetings Corporation, the largest manufacturer of greeting cards, boast $1.8billion in annual sales of which 25% or, approximately 190 million of those are for Valentine's Day.-not including the million or so exchanged among children at school. And women may be the biggest purchasers of Valentine's cards, but men account for 15% of those sales, and word is out, that number is rising. According to the Greeting Card Association, 9 out of 10 people look forward to getting a valentine's card, so men may not be buying them but they sure are expecting to receive one. That makes Valentine's Day the most popular day for sending and receiving cards, second to Christmas. And it's celebrated by just as many people and businesses.

Yes, Millions of dollars are being made and exchanged in the name of love on this day. According to the Diamond Information Center, 2.3 million couples get engaged annually and 10% of those happen on valentine's day. In diamond dollars that's 230 thousand times two people, celebrating Valentine's Day (Bling! Bling!). More flowers, (roses of course) and $14.9 billion worth of chocolate (36 million

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