Valentine's Day

How "I Love You" is said in... 

Bulgarian: Obicham te
Cantonese: Moi oiy neya
Dutch: Ik ben verliefd op je
French: Je t'aime
Gaelic: Ta gra agam ort
German: Ich liebe Dich
Greek: s'ayapo
Irish: taim i' ngra leat
Italian: ti amo
Japanese: Suki desu
Romanian: Te Ador
Russian: Ya Tibieh Lublue
Spanish: Te amo
Swedish: Jag a"lskar dig
Thai: Khao Raak Thoe
Vietnamese: Toi yeu em

Sonnet 116: By William Shakespeare

LET me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixè’d mark

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out ev’’n to the edge of doom:

If this be error, and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

So why do we go to all the fuss over Valentines’ Day?  Why do people spend lots of money on gifts and cards for one another?

Well, lets go back to when it all started, hundreds of years ago in Rome, when Claudius the 2nd was the Emperor of the Roman Empire. He liked going to war against other empires so he needed a really big army.  Trouble was, all the young, strong men were too busy falling in love and getting married rather than wanting to go and fight for the Roman Army!

That’s when Claudius realised that he had to do some thing about all this ‘love’ business!

Claudius, being the ruler of the country, could do anything he wanted, so he decided to ban people from getting married so that the young men would want to fight in the army.

St Valentine was a Catholic priest in Rome.  He enjoyed working in his community and was a kind,loving, friendly person who loved to marry young couples and give them God’s blessing.  He was horrified when Claudius banned people from marrying and so he carried out secret marriageceremonies for lots of couples who wished to marry.

Unfortunately, despite being very sneaky, St. Valentine was caught and sent to prison.  Claudius the Emperor ordered for him to be beheaded and he was killed on February 14th.  This is why we celebrate St. Valentine’s day – to remember how loving and caring he was.