Valentine’s Day is celebrated adoringly; it is named after Saint Valentine who was a catholic priest who lived in Rome in the third century.

During those days in Rome, many Romans were converting to Christianity, but the Emperor Claudius II was a Pagan (Pagans are followers of a polytheistic or pantheistic nature-worshipping religion). Claudius made some strict laws about what Christians were allowed to do. He firmly believed that Roman soldiers should be completely devoted to Rome and therefore passed a law averting them from marrying. St Valentine started helping the soldiers to marry secretly in Christian ceremonies because Valentine believed that love has positive effects in life and nothing comes above love. Saint Valentine’s reputation grew day by day as devotee of love.

In due course Claudius found out that Valentine was helping the soldiers to marry secretly and he was jailed for his ‘crime’ of getting the soldiers married. In the imprisonment, Valentine was sympathetic with his fellow prisoners and he felt very sympathetic for the jailor’s blind daughter. It seems, Valentine cured the girl’s blindness and before he got executed he wrote a love message for the girl signed as ‘from your Valentine’. Valentine was executed on 14 February in the year 270.

Since then 14^th February is celebrated as ‘Valentine’s Day’ in many countries around the world. This day is famous for sending love messages by lovers to each other. People send special cards expressing their affection, roses, cupids, chocolates, gifts, jewelry etc. Usually, people send beautiful handmade cards to their lovers. The sender shows how much he/she loves the recipient. Cards usually contain sentimental verse, proclaiming the beauty of the receiver and how much they are loved.

Valentine’s Day is most commonly associated with romantic love, with millions of Valentine’s Day cards being exchanged each year. Gifts of flowers or a single red rose are sent with romantic messages to loved ones and couples spend special time together. Valentine’s Day gift hampers are also a popular gift and typically include flowers, champagne and chocolates.

Valentine’s Day generates record-breaking flower sales and the exchange of over a billion boxes of chocolate. For brands, it provides a much-needed sales boost following a post-Christmas lull. Even during global economic slowdowns, companies cash in on Valentine Day’s with record sales of popular gift articles like flowers, jewelry, chocolates, toys, readymade garments, mobile phones, electronic gadgets, wrist watches, perfumes etc.

Some particulars about Valentine’s Day:

• Do you know that Valentine’s Day is a $14.7 billion industry in the U.S, and in India it is about Rs.15 billion?
• Americans spend around $277 million on Valentine cards every year, second only to Christmas!!
• It seems the condom company Durex reports that condom sales are 20-30% higher around Valentine’s Day Valentine’s Day (V-Day) in India.
• Valentine’s Day was first introduced to Japan in 1936 and has become widely popular. However, because of a translation error made by a chocolate company, only women buy Valentine chocolates for their spouses, boyfriends, or friends. In fact, it is the only day of the year many single women will reveal their crush to opposite sex by giving them chocolates. The men don’t return the favor until White Day, a type of “answer day” to Valentine’s Day, which they celebrate on March 14^th.
• On Valentine’s Day in 2010, 39,897 people in Mexico City broke the record for the world’s largest group kiss!
• Richard Cadbury produced the first box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day in the late 1800s
• A kiss on Valentine’s Day is considered to bring good luck all throughout the year.
• On Valentine’s Day, many people buy flowers. Different colored roses have different meanings: Red means love, yellow means friendship, and pink means friendship or sweetheart. Red carnations mean admiration, white carnations mean pure love, red chrysanthemums mean love, forget-me-nots mean true love, primrose means young love, and larkspur means an open heart!
• Traditionally, young girls in the U.S. and the U.K. believed they could tell what type of man they would marry depending on the type of bird they saw first on Valentine’s Day. If they saw a blackbird, they would marry a clergyman, a robin redbreast indicated a sailor, and a goldfinch indicated a rich man. A sparrow meant they would marry a farmer, a blue bird indicated a happy man, and a crossbill meant an argumentative man. If they saw a dove, they would marry a good man, but seeing a woodpecker meant they would not marry at all.
• Roses and Cupids are favorites of lovers. Do you know, Cupid was one of the gods of mythology? In Latin, the word Cupid means “desire.” Cupid is typically represented as a chubby, naked, winged boy or youth with a mischievous smile. He possessed a bow with a quiver of arrows by which he transfixed the hearts of youths and maidens. Cherubs are descendants of Cupid. They are depicted as lovable little winged creatures without arrows and quivers. Cherubs were typically not mischievous like Cupid.
• Valentine’s Day cards are decorated with pictures of cupid, hearts and flowers and trimmed with lace and ribbon. These images are still used today to symbolize love and are recognized all over the world.
• Marriage proposals are popular on Valentine’s Day, and it is often chosen as the perfect day to express a person’s love and commitment. Some marriage proposals are sent very creatively, such as after climbing to the top of a mountain, or posting a message on a billboard, sending a proposal with a small girl or a boy. Whatever the method, marriage proposals made on Valentine’s Day are generally romantic and memorable.
• Friends, while Valentine’s Day is celebrated in most countries, different cultures have developed their own traditions for this festival. In some parts of the world Valentine’s Day is observed as a day for expressing love between family members and friends. It is not only celebrated by romantic couples. Some traditions include keeping chocolates and gifts in children’s bedroom do that they see them first in the morning. And, some people celebrate it for expressing appreciation between friends. Families go for outings, picnics and luncheons to celebrate unity and love for each other.Most of us think that love is about just talking kindly, warm and cute words to others. But in reality is expressing love is different and hard. So what the true love meant to be? It is caring of someone you love, being with him/her when he/her needs you the most. Love is not just telling “I love you”, it is about being together in thick and thin times, giving the emotional and physical support. Also, in good times having fun together.So dear friends enjoy the Valentine’s Day with your loved ones, your friends, your pets, your neighbors with humanity.

While heartbreak weakens us the fact is it also strengthens us in many ways. The first thing it makes us realise is that each relationship has many dimensions; love is just a part of it.  We realise who is dependable and who is not. It is no great deal to allow some relations to linger on without directions.  

It makes us aware of our inner weaknesses. People are not able to accept their faults, many become sullen if their weaknesses are pointed out by others. But heartbreak surely makes us aware of our weak points; in a way, it gives us an opportunity for self-improvement. People feel lost after a breakup. It’s the body’s way of communicating its pain. Everyone should experience heartbreak at least once in their lifetime. Most of us experience it more than once. 

To commemorate broken relationships a museum is built in Croatia, it’s called the Museum of Broken Relationships. It lies between Saint Mark’s Church and Saint Catherine’s in Zagreb’s Upper Town. On Saturdays in the Croatian capital, brides and grooms rotate for portraits against the spiritual backdrops of items present in the museum. While wedding guests replenish during the happy day with coffee on the terrace of the museum’s well-positioned cafe. The museum exhibition space puts heartache on display.

The aim of the museum is to allow lovesick people to heal after a visit to the museum; whatever the circumstances might be, people draw comfort from the museum. It is the brainchild of two star-crossed Croatian lovers, Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić. After their own love affair ended, the separated couple began collecting the relics of other failed relationships. Everyday objects like watches, high-heeled shoes, and cigarette lighters were anonymously donated by local Zagreb residents, and in 2010 the first Museum of Broken Relationships opened for business.

The idea is to portray personal leftovers from the breakup. Olinka Vištica is a film producer, and Dražen Grubišić is a sculptor. When they both ended their four years union, they created this museum as a symbolic space to put things that were very important to them when they were in a relationship. They didn’t throw away things that they cared for.  The founders’ contribution soon attracted a global supply of woes, promises in form of gifts of all sorts. For example, a toy rabbit standing in front of his vacation snapshot in a desert near Tehran. It now poses under the placard: “The bunny was supposed to travel the world but never got further than Iran.”

Mannequin hands which are weird leftovers of a 5-year “love-hate relationship” in Berlin include a pair of wooden hands. The donor explains: “One night I left my room and did not come back until next morning to find it was completely destroyed, sprayed all over with polyurethane foam, total chaos. My favourite mannequin had no choice but to believe it.”

A tingle with a placard saying what do you do when a departed girlfriend leaves behind her erotic head massager? Donate it: “One of the things one doesn’t give back to ex-girlfriends.”

The letter T: A Slovenia couple who met online didn’t survive the first real-life encounter. The placard reads “When we actually met in person the mutual interest was lost and he gave me the letter T from his keyboard, as he did not need it any longer.”

Intimate shampoo: These are things you don’t remember to pack when you leave for good. “After the relationship ended, my mother used it for glass polishing. She claims it’s absolutely great.”

The museum had humble beginnings; the first exhibition was given in a shipping container in a museum garden in Zagreb. Both Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić had clarity of the basic foundation: The objects should be presented very simply, with a card underneath outlining the person’s story, it could be a few words or a few lines, or it could be something longer and more intricate. The written expression of how the object mattered to the donor was important.  Over 4,000 objects ranging from a doll, a wedding gown to a hammer have since been submitted from anonymous donors across the globe. These include an axe used to chop up an ex-boyfriend’s furniture; a letter was written by a 13-year-old boy fleeing Sarajevo; and a jar of “love incense,” labelled simply: “doesn’t work.”

There is a special kind of magic to these items. They are ordinary in nature, we see them every day.   But the stories they tell are like windows of souls of strangers. Gifts tell a lot about the donor’s emotions, it can be in any form. And after a relationship breaks, those gifts trouble two people involved in the relation.

Museum of Broken Relationships gives space to innumerable people to vent out pain and frustration. It is a physical and virtual public space created with the sole purpose of treasuring and sharing their heartbreak stories and symbolic possessions. It is a museum about you, about us, about the ways we love and lose. At its core, the museum is an ever-growing collection of items, each a memento of the past of a relationship, accompanied by a personal, yet anonymous story of its contributor. Unlike ‘destructive’ self-help instructions for recovery from grief and loss, the Museum offers the chance to overcome an emotional crumple through creativity – by contributing to its universal collection.

Heartbreak can provide a lot of positive psychological benefits. It can ultimately pave the way for having something bigger, better, and more beautiful. The unique museum is an illustration of this fact.

There are different opinions on whether or not to celebrate birthdays. The Wikipedia defines it as a day that comes once a year when a person celebrates the anniversary of his or her birth. It has a reason for celebration as it gives you an opportunity to reflect on your life’s journey every year on the day you were born.

As per some research done on this topic by some scholars, in ancient Egypt, when pharaohs were crowned they were considered to have transformed into gods. It seems the Egyptians used to celebrate the coronation date of promoting of pharaohs with pomp and shows; this was given much more important than their birth into the world. Scholars have noted this in Bible’s reference as the earliest known mention of birthday celebration.

In another mention, the Greeks used to offer moon-shaped cakes to Artemis – the lunar Goddess as a form of tribute to her. By paying respect Artemis the Greeks used to feel that they could energize the glow of the moon also. It seems the Greeks lit candles and put them on cakes for a radiant effect. The Greeks most likely took the idea of birthday celebration from the Egyptians, since just like the celebration of the pharaohs as Gods; the Greeks were celebrating birthday of their goddesses. So friends’ birthdays were celebrated even in the ancient times, though with a difference.

Your birthday represents completion of another year of your life. A birthday party is celebration of life that you have enjoyed and lived through. Your birthday represents how far you have come. It is good to be thankful to your parents, family and friends for what you have in life and what you have accomplished. You should celebrate the achievements you have added to your being. It’s a way of appreciating the fruits of life. It is a window to the chance of a lifetime, the chance to fulfill your unique mission. So a birthday is a momentous occasion, to be celebrated just as an organization’s birthday, a nation’s birthday, an event’s yearly celebration and a fête as a ceremony.

I think it is much more than an occasion of receiving gifts. On a larger canvas, it is a chance to remember the day that a major event occurred, to celebrate and give thanks to the Almighty and to reflect upon how well we are fulfilling our calling.

When people give you cards, gifts and parties, it’s their way of saying that they enjoy your existence and because of you the world is a better place to live. The very existence of human, organizations, nations, events are made up of moments and changes in their lifespan. The lifecycle goes through so many changes.  In his book From Beginning to End: The Rituals of Our Lives, Robert Fulghum says that rituals are timed by beats of the heart, not ticks of the clock. So, birthdays are the milestones of a life. You should enjoy because your heart ticks, you should enjoy for the experience added to your life. And, enjoy it for an extension of life.