A new millennium may be here, but some things show no sign of changing any time soon. Heading the list is a celebration of human love more than 2,000 years old. This Valentine's Day, as has been the case for centuries past, lovers will salute each other with hearts and flowers, candy and other tokens of affection. And Americans will send each other more cards, both comic and romantic, than on any other occasion except Christmas.

Valentine’s Day has its origins in a Roman ritual, the Lupercalia. As early as the fourth century B.C., young Roman men drew the name of a teenage girl from a box at random. The couple entertained each other, sometimes engaging in sexual acts, for a year, and then another lottery was held.

The Lupercian ritual had been the custom for some 800 years when the fathers of the early Christian church decided to eradicate the practice. They found a "lovers" saint to replace the pagan god Lupercus in Valentine, Bishop of Interamna, who had been martyred in 270 A.D.

Valentine drew the ire of the mad emperor Claudius II. After the emperor, in need of raising armies to control the far-flung Roman Empire, had issued an edict forbidding marriage on the grounds that married men made poor soldiers because they were reluctant to leave their families to go into battle. Valentine contravened the emperor’s order by inviting young couples to come to him to be married in secret. Claudius had the "friend of lovers" brought to his palace and, impressed with the strength of the young priest’s convictions as well as his dignity, attempted to convert him to the Roman gods to save him from the execution that otherwise would be his fate. Valentine refused to renounce Christianity and instead tried, unsuccessfully, to convert Claudius. In February 270, Valentine was clubbed and stoned, then beheaded.

It is claimed that while Valentine was in prison awaiting execution, he fell in love with the blind daughter of his jailer. His unswerving faith miraculously restored her sight and his farewell to her, "From Your Valentine," is said to be the first Valentine message in history.

In 496 A.D. Pope Gelasius outlawed the festival celebrating Lupercus. Knowing the Romans’ love of games of chance, he kept the lottery, but instead of a companion for a year, men and women alike drew slips of paper inscribed with the names of various saints whose lives they were expected to emulate. He made Valentine the spiritual overseer and patron saint of the replacement ritual. Although they did so reluctantly, with the passage of time growing numbers of Romans replaced the Lupercalia with the holy day dedicated to Valentine.

Roman young men kept the long-standing tradition of meeting and courting prospective mates in mid-February. They instituted the custom of offering handwritten greetings to women whom they admired and wished to court, and the greetings gradually acquired Valentine’s name. The earliest known Valentine’s Day card was sent in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. It can still be viewed in London’s British Museum.

In the 16th century Saint Francis de Sales, Bishop of Geneva, feeling that his parishioners had strayed from the ways of the church and needed models for their behavior, tried to replace the custom of sending cards with the lottery of saints’ names. His efforts failed, and Valentine’s cards continued to proliferate. Cupid, in Roman mythology the son of Venus, goddess of love and beauty, depicted as a naked cherub armed with arrows dipped in love potion, began to appear on Valentine’s cards.

Handmade cards had become oversized and elaborate by the 17th century; cards sold commercially though smaller were more expensive. In 1797 "The Young Man’s Valentine Writer" was printed by a British publisher and provided young lovers unable to compose their own verses with scores of ready-made rhymes. "Mechanical valentines," cards with verses and, sketches, were produced by a number of printers and, given a decline in postal rates during the following century, the practice of mailing commercially produced valentine cards grew and spread.

The proliferation of mailed valentines and inexpensive postage stamps also made possible the sending of anonymous cards, some of which were quite racy and an incongruous note in the Victorian era otherwise noted for its prudishness. Some cards became so prurient that several countries banned the practice of sending valentines. Some 25,000 cards were rejected by the Chicago post office in the late 19th century on the grounds that they were not fit to be carried by the United States Postal Service.

The first American to publish valentines was Esther Howland, a printer and artist. During the 1870s she produced lace cards so elaborate they ranged in price from $5 to $10. Some cost as much as $35, then and now an enormous amount of money for a card. Whatever the price, the valentine card business in the United States has flourished and shows no sign of diminishing. Although Saint Valentine’s feast day was dropped from the Roman Catholic church liturgical calendar in 1969, the day traditionally set aside for lovers is still celebrated in many countries throughout the world.