It is Feb. 14 and love is in the air. It’s Valentine’s Day, and for those of you fortunate enough to have a loved one in your life, take a moment to tell them you love and appreciate them.

I love the history of things and while I’m sure we’ve all heard of Saint Valentine, do you know about Lupercalia? Valentine’s Day is not a federal holiday, but St. Valentine was a Catholic Saint, and like many holidays, the church used the celebration of Lupercalia to convert pagans to Christianity. Lupercalia was an agricultural fertility festival. An order of Roman priests would gather in the cave where Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome, were thought to have been raised by wolves, sacrificed a couple animals, soaked strips of hide in the blood and then went around slapping women and crops with the blood. Everybody had a good time because the women figured it would bring them fertility, and the crops got a good dousing of blood which fertilized the dirt, which in turn helped the crops grow. Mission accomplished.

It is thought that the Catholic Church decided to honor Saint Valentine’s martyrdom in 270 A.D. in mid-February in an attempt to Christianize the pagan celebration.

No romantic celebrations of Valentine’s Day are recorded before 1375, when Chaucer wrote of Feb. 14 as the day when the birds and beasts came together to find a mate. He may, in fact, be the founder of Valentine’s Day. Who knew?

By the time the mid-1700s rolled around, it was quite common for friends and lovers to exchange handwritten notes of affection. Not until 1900 did printed cards replace the personal letters and tokens of affection of old, thereby making Valentine’s Day a mundane and second-most profitable holiday for card makers.

Romance needn’t be confined to February, however. In fact, some of the most famous tokens of love took years in the making. For instance:

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the lost Seven Wonders of the World, was built by King Nebuchadnezzar II as a gift for his homesick wife to break the monotony of desert living.

The Taj Mahal was built as a mausoleum for Shah Jahan’s favorite wife. It was unfortunate he didn’t show this affection before she died in childbirth with their 14th child. Come to think of it, maybe he did at least fourteen times.

The British monarchy took a hit when Edward VIII abdicated the throne in favor of his American lover, twice married and divorced Wallace Simpson.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” written for her husband, Robert Browning, were only published after she insisted they be published as translations of Portuguese sonnets in order to hide their personal meaning. “How do I love thee/ let me count the ways”

World War II prisoner Horace Greasley escaped from a German prison camp over 200 times to be with his German lover. Makes me wonder if Colonel Klink was in charge of that prison.

There was Romeo and Juliet, those star-crossed lovers, perhaps the most famous of all lovers. Shakespeare stole the story, of course, from a Greek tragedy as well as a couple of poets. Just goes to show: marketing is everything.

Harry and Bess Truman; Antony and Cleopatra; Lancelot and Guinevere; Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles well, maybe we won’t go there; all famous, or infamous love affairs.

My all-time favorite love affair, however, is Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe. They were only married for 274 days, but “Joltin” Joe stood by her the rest of her life. He never remarried and three times a week, for twenty years after her death, he sent red roses to her grave in Los Angeles.

Ah, love.

Robyn Near is a Ripley resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com