Happy Valentine’s Day

Ahh, it’s Valentine’s Day, which is usually the day in my life when ex-girlfriends get engaged and I personally celebrate the anniversary of the first trainload of oranges leaving Los Angeles via the transcontinental railroad. (The year was 1886. Grover Cleveland was president for the first of two non-consecutive occasions. Modern field hockey had just been invented the previous month.)

I don’t think I’m bitter about Valentine’s Day. (This is in part due to being bitter 100 percent of the time about other things, natch.) I really only have happy memories from it, such as the time I got a card that read: “50 percent of people get laid on Valentine’s Day. The other 50 percent get a greeting card.” Now that’s my idea of a good day.

Here are some fun facts about Valentine’s Day:

• Not even the Catholic Church knows who St. Valentine is. There are three St. Valentines mentioned in early church writings, all with the feast day of Feb. 14.
• The actual Valentine’s Day was made up by Geoffrey Chaucer under the guise of an “ancient tradition” in a poem he wrote for Richard II.
• The church removed the feast day of St. Valentine in 1969 in order to get rid of saints considered to be more legend than fact.
• Since 2001, the Greeting Card Association has given an annual Esther Howland Award for Greeting Card Visionaries. This award was named after the smart woman who first came up with the idea in America to make a ton of money selling Valentine’s Day cards.

Despite all that, I’m still wearing red today. Hey, I still eat on Thanksgiving and I’ve been to the Betsy Ross House.

May your Valentine’s Day be full of love.

Puppy love [Flickr]