Valentine's Day 2027

An observance, not a day off

Valentine's Day falls on February 14 every year and is one of the most widely celebrated dates on the American calendar, yet it has no legal status at all. It is not a federal holiday, no state closes offices for it, and employers, banks, markets and schools operate on a normal schedule. Because the date is fixed and nothing closes, there is no observed-date rule: when February 14 lands on a weekend, the celebrating simply happens on the weekend, and restaurants stretch the occasion across several days.

Why February 14

The date is the feast day of Saint Valentine, associated with at least two early Christian martyrs named Valentine who were executed in the third century, during the era of the Roman emperor Claudius II. Pope Gelasius I placed the feast on the church calendar at the end of the fifth century. The romantic connection came much later! Medieval Europeans believed birds chose their mates in mid-February, and Geoffrey Chaucer drew on that idea in his poem 'Parliament of Fowls,' written around 1382, the earliest clear link between Saint Valentine's day and courtship. One popular legend, impossible to verfiy, says Valentine was jaield for secretly marrying Roman soldiers and signed a farewel note 'from your Valentine.'

From handmade notes to a card industry

Handwritten valentines circuleted in England by the fifteenth century; a verse the imprisoned Charles, Duke of Orleans, sent his wife in 1415 is often called the oldest surviving valentine. Handmade cards appeared in the sixteenth century, and mass production began around 1800. In the United States, Esther Howland of Worcester, Massachusetts, began producing elaborate lace-and-ribbon valentines commercially in the late 1840s and built one of the country's first greeting-card businesses. By the early twentieth century, machine-made cards had taken over, with Hallmark entering the valentine trade in the 1910s.

How Americans celebrate today

Valentine's Day now ranks among the biggest consumer occasions of the year. Americans exchange greeting cards, roses, chocolate and jewelry; restaurants book out for dinner; and elementary school classrooms hold card exchanges, a tradition dating back generations - florists and chocolatiers do a large share of their annual business in the two weeks before the holiday, and towns with romantic names, most famously Loveland, Colorado, remail thousands of valentines each year so envelopes carry their postmark. The day is also a popular date for weddings and marriage proposals.

What is open

Everything. Mail is delivered, banks and stock exchanges keep normal hours, schools are in session, and federal, state and local offices are open. The only practical planning concern is demand: dinner reservations, flower deliveries and hotel bookings around February 14 sell out early, and prices for roses typically spike. Similar celebrations take place the same day in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and much of the world, making Valentine's Day a global observance without being an official holiday almost anywhere.