Commentary on My Valentine’s Day Essay Experience

This project was interesting to undertake, because in the process of completing it, I learned much about a holiday that I previously believed to have been invented by Hallmark. The legend of St. Valentine was actually very interesting to read. What I found most interesting about it was that, what he was remembered for was marrying couples when marriage was outlawed. Yet, Valentine’s Day is the holiday for lovers, not necessarily married couples. I find it odd that the original reason for why St. Valentine was executed was distorted in the holiday that was named for him. Seeing as how he was a priest I am sure he was simply performing his duties to the church. I think that if he knew the present nature of his holiday, he would not be pleased. Besides that amusing piece of irony, the rest of the tale is somewhat predictable.

The research for this project was fairly easy. In order to find the websites needed for the project, I used the Google search engine. After finding the initial sites on general Valentine’s Day history, I narrowed my hunt by searching for specifics. The most notable one was Esther A. Howland. Once I saw a reference to her as the first person to mass-produce Valentine’s Day cards, I immediately did a search for her. The information I found on her was pretty general, but still useful for my purposes. Much of the information that I needed for this project was readily available on free websites, and made my work that much easier.