What Valentine’s Day Means To Me - Giveaway

As a practicing Catholic I love to hear the stories of the lives of the saints. While I definitely love all the love of Valentine's day I don't lose sight of the fact that Valentine's Day celebrates more than hearts and flowers.

How familiar are you with the legend of St. Valentine?

In 270 A.D., marriage had been outlawed by the emperor of Rome, Claudius II. Claudius issued this decree because he thought that married men made bad soldiers since they were reluctant to be torn away from their families in the case of war. Claudius had also outlawed Christianity in this time period because he wished to be praised as the one supreme god, the Emperor of Rome. Valentine was the bishop of Interamna during this period of oppression. Valentine thought that the decrees of Rome were wrong. He believed that people should be free to love God and to marry. Valentine invited the young couples of the area to come to him. When they came, Valentine secretly performed services of matrimony and united the couples.

St. Valentine was imprisoned and while he awaited his execution to be carried out, Valentine fell in love with the jailer's daughter, the blind Asterius.

During the course of Valentine's prison stay, a miracle occurred and Asterius regained her sight. Valentine sent her a final farewell note. He signed his last note, "From Your Valentine." Even today, this message remains as the motto for our Valentine's Day celebrations.

Today about 192 million Valentine's Day cards exchanged annually. That's a lot of Valentines and my favorite Valentine's are the ones that are made special by the ones I love.

That's one of the reasons I LOVE Valentines card's from Shutterfly. You can customize them for the special person in your life.

Did you know that you can buy your Valentine’s gifts at Shutterfly too? They have so many things to chose from and each one can be personalized with a special photo like personalized mugs.

Thanks to Shutterfly, one of my readers will be receiving 25 FREE Valentine’s cards! It's easy to win!

You HAVE to be a follower of New Day New Page to Win then just tell me which Valentine's Day card you'd order if you won! That's it. Best of all you can use the same answer to enter each and every day. I told you it was easy now didn't I?

This giveaway will begin on January 29, 2011, and ends on February 2, 2010 at 11:59 PM ET. You MUST leave a separate comment for each entry you wish to make. This giveaway is open to U.S. residents only, 18 years old or over, and the winner will be chosen by random.org. The winner will be contacted by email and will to respond by February 4th in order to receive your prize. Once I have received a response from the winner’s the name of the winner will be posted here.

In keeping with the FTC rules I would like to inform you that I received no financial compensation for this post. The people at Shutterfly will be providing me with 25 Valentine's Day cards described above agreed to will also be supply 25 Valentine's Day cards to one of my readers. The opinions expressed in this post are my own

If you are a blogger, I have more news for you. You can promote your Shutterfly blog post on Facebook and Twitter “Tell Shutterfly what Valentine’s Day means to you, get 25 free cards