Today, we might celebrate it by making goo-goo eyes at our partners over a bottle of wine, a plate of spaghetti and a bouquet of roses, but ancient Romans celebrated the day with a fertility festival hundreds of years ago with animal sacrifices and drunken merrymaking.

According to History.com, exchanging Valentine's took off in the 1700s, a period coinciding with Romanticism in literature and art across Europe and America. When a woman named Esther A. Howland began selling the first mass-produced valentines in the 1840s, an industry was born.

But the origins are far more complex — and darker than the chocolate we indulge in on the day of love. Valentine’s Day is rooted in ancient Roman rituals, where sacrifice and

While historians have long debated the holiday's origin story, evidence shows it predates the existence of commercial greeting cards by centuries.

The Chicago area was waking up Friday to a bitter cold Valentine’s Day morning, the NBC 5 Storm Team said, with temperatures below zero in some parts and wind chills in the teens. After that, a snowy weekend was on the way.