Days Until Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day sits fixed on 14 February, so the only variables are how far off it is — counted live above — and which weekday it lands on, which decides whether dinner is on the night itself or moved to the weekend.

If you are the booking type: popular restaurants fill two to three weeks out when the 14th falls on a Friday or Saturday. The five-year table below shows which years those are.

The historical Valentine is obscure to the point of embarrassment: the Catholic Church recognises several martyrs of that name and, in 1969, removed the feast from the general calendar precisely because so little could be established about any of them. The romantic association appears to begin with Chaucer, whose 1382 Parlement of Foules links the date to birds choosing their mates — quite possibly the first time anyone connected 14 February with love at all.

The commercial form is Victorian. Cheap postage and mechanised printing made the mass-produced card possible in the 1840s, and the practice spread quickly enough to attract complaints about vulgarity within a decade. Modern estimates put annual card volumes in the hundreds of millions, second only to Christmas.

Other countries observe it differently enough to be worth knowing before travelling. In Japan women give chocolate on 14 February and men reciprocate on White Day, 14 March. In Wales, Dydd Santes Dwynwen on 25 January serves a similar role. Brazil marks Dia dos Namorados in June, deliberately avoiding a clash with Carnival.

Valentine's Day — the next five years