Days Until Valentine's Day

About Valentine's Day

February 14 traces back to the feast day of Saint Valentine in the Christian liturgical calendar; the association with romantic love is generally traced by historians to the medieval period, notably Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century poetry, rather than to anything specific known about the historical Saint Valentine himself, whose story is genuinely murky and possibly conflates multiple early Christian martyrs of that name.

It's now marked commercially and culturally as a day for romantic gift-giving and gestures across much of the world, though its popularity as a commercial occasion varies significantly by country.

The holiday's date sits almost exactly between the Southern Hemisphere's summer and the Northern Hemisphere's winter, which is part of why some Southern Hemisphere countries have historically shown less cultural enthusiasm for a February 14 romance-themed holiday than countries where it lands in cold, indoor-social-season winter.

Japan has developed a distinctive local twist on the holiday, where women traditionally give chocolate to men on February 14, with men reciprocating gifts a month later on the separately observed White Day, March 14.