“Chocolate.“ “Roses.“ “Ugh.“ “Us.“These were the first words that came to the minds of three female Point Park Universitystudents with varying relationship statuses and opinions about Valentine’s Day.”Us”conveys the theme at the heart of the Feb. 14 holiday: love. Yet the first two words suggest that, like many other Americanholidays, Valentine’s Dayhas become, for the most part, just another marketable holiday; hence the “ugh.”Contrary to what cynics may contest, however, the holiday of “love” is more than just a business ploy for Hallmark Cards.According to legend relayed by Edward Meena, a history professor at Point Park,Valentine’s Day acquired its name from a Roman priest, St.Valentine.In a phone interview, Meena said Valentine was jailed for defying the law of the time and marrying couples in secret.While in prison, he formed a relationship with the jailer’s blind daughter who visited him often as he awaited his execution. As the legend goes, he was able to cure her blindness and they fell in love. Before his death, scheduled for Feb. 14, he wrote her a fi nalletter and signed it “from your Valentine,” an expression which is still in use today.The holiday’s earliest origins can be found in an ancient Roman festival, according to the National Geographic Society’s website. For the Romans, Feb. 15. marked the beginning of the Feast of Lupercalia, essentially a pagan fertility festival.What is now a day to send roses or chocolates  has roots in a custom in which Roman men “stripped naked, grabbed goat- or dog-skin whips and spanked young maidens in hopes of increasing their fertility,” said classics professor Noel Lenski of the University of Colorado at Boulder” in an interview with the National Geographic.Continuing with the outrageous customs, it is also commonly believed that on the eve of the festival, young Roman boys and girls, who were typically kept away from one another, participated in another tradition described in “The Whole Earth Holiday Book” by Linda Polon and Aileen Cantwell. The girls’ names were written on pieces of paper and placed into a large urn so that each boy could draw a name at random. The girl with the chosen name would then belong to the boy as a romantic partner until next year’s celebration. Often, the two would fall in love and marry.Valentine’s Day traditions have been tamed since then, both physically and morally.Quenette Battle, a sophomore business management major, recalled her elementary school celebrations of Valentine’s Day via e-mail. Her father would take her and her sisters shopping at K-mart to pick out valentines to deliver to her classmates. Then, Battle saw the holiday as “all fun” and “only about the candy and your friends.”Throughout high school she had a boyfriend, so Valentine’s Day was one of her favorite times of the year. With dinner for two, a movie and pink roses, she saw it as almost a “secondhand anniversary.”Presently, Battle’s view of Valentine’s Day has changed once again.”As you mature, you realize that it’s OK to be by yourself,” she said. “So many rush just to find someone to share the 14th with and then forget about them on the 15th. If you’re single, be single. You don’t have to rush into a mini relationship in fear of being aloneor just for the hype of a love-filled holiday. If you’re taken, that is your day to show the person you love how much you really do [love them], even though that should be done daily.”That sentiment was shared by Jessica Behning, a sophomore dance major. Even when Behning was in a relationship in high school, she considered Valentine’s Day to be slightly overrated.”It is sweet and fun to receive gifts, [but] it seemed pointless to spend money or givegifts just because it was ‘supposed’ to happen,” Behning said via e-mail. “Nothing seems special because it doesn’t come from the heart. Everyone does something sweet because they feel that they have to.”As Valerie Macher, a freshman cinema and digital arts major, said via e-mail, the celebration of Valentine’s Day is not just limited to couples. She plans on going out with a group of her friends, and considers it to be “just another day.”Although Phylicia Winland, a junior secondary education major, has no plans for the exact date of Feb. 14, the holiday still means alot to her. Because her fiancé, Dan Joy, is in the United States military, the calendar does not determine the date of their “special holiday.” It takes place whenever they can be together.”Last [Valentine’s Day] my current fiancé was in Iraq, so it was kind of tough, but when he came home on leave last March, we had our own V-Day and that was the night he proposed,” Winland said via e-mail. “It’s a day about one of the most beautiful things in life, and that is love.”