From today's "Ann Landers" syndicated column:

Dear Ann Landers: I realize you don't specialize in cultural history, but I thought you might like to know more about the origins of Valentine's Day.

St. Valentine's Day began with a pagan fertility festival, Lupercal, held on Feb. 15. In the year 496, Pope Gelasius created a feast day in memory of St. Valentine, a martyred 3rd Century priest, and placed it on Feb. 14, hoping early Christians would celebrate their romantic traditions a day early and dedicate them to the saint instead of the Roman love goddess Juno. The feast day stuck, but the romantic holiday didn't.

The romantic holiday finally took hold in medieval England. Geoffrey Chaucer, famous for writing "The Canterbury Tales," got together with his fellow poets and invented a new holiday to lift the people's spirits. In a poem titled "The Parliament of Fowls," Chaucer claimed that all the birds in the world choose their mates on St. Valentine's Day. Shakespeare refers to Chaucer's poem in his play "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and gives the name "Valentine" to characters in two other romantic comedies. Ophelia, in "Hamlet," sings that she wants to "be your Valentine."

It all started with the two greatest love poets in the English language. -- Steven Anderson, adjunct professor, Department of English, Gettysburg College, Pa.

Dear Ann: The feast of St. Valentine has been associated with romance for nearly 1,000 years. King Henry VIII made Valentine's Day a national holiday. Love tokens were frequently given on the feast, almost always anonymously. By the 1800s, the so-called "comic" valentines appeared. Sent anonymously, they were a form of social criticism, cruelly pointing out people's faults.

My information came from Nancy Rosin, the vice president of the National Valentine Collector's Association. -- Tony Hyman, CBS' "The Saturday Early Show," author of "Trash or Treasure Guide of Buyers"