1. The History of St. Valentine’s Day

2. St. Valentine’s Day
St. Valentine’s Day or Valentine’s Day is celebrated every year on 14th February.
It is the day when people show their love for another person or people by sending cards, flowers or chocolates with messages of love.

3. Who was St. Valentine?
The popular belief about St Valentine is that he was a priest from Rome long ago in the past.
Do you know any priest?
Who is our school priest?

4. Who was St. Valentine?
An Emperor called Claudius II had stopped people getting married because he thought married men were bad soldiers. Valentine felt this was unfair, so he broke the rules and married people in secret.

5. Who was St. Valentine?
When Claudius found out, Valentine was thrown in jail and sentenced to death.

6. Who was St. Valentine?
There, he fell in love with the jailer's daughter and when he was taken to be killed on 14 February he sent her a love letter signed "from your Valentine".

7. Valentine’s Day
Valentine's Day has been celebrated for a very long time, some people think it came from a Roman festival. Do you know what a festival is? Can you think of any festivals we have in Ireland? The Romans called the festival Lupercalia in the middle of February. This was the start of their Springtime.

8. Valentine’s Day
Later on, the church wanted to turn this festival into a Christian celebration and decided to use it to remember St Valentine too.

9. Valentine’s Day
Gradually, St Valentine's name started to be used by people to express their feelings to those they loved.

11. Valentine’s Day
It's thought that as part of the celebrations, boys drew names of girls from a box. They'd be boyfriend and girlfriend during the festival and sometimes they'd get married.