title: Styx (band)

text: In February 2017, it was announced that Styx and REO Speedwagon would join forces in a tour entitled "United We Rock" with special guest Felder, which was in large concert venues throughout the US. On April 21, 2017, Styx announced a studio album entitled "The Mission", simultaneously releasing the single "Gone Gone Gone". The album was released on June 16, 2017, and is a concept album about a mission to Mars.


title: Styx (band)

text: On April 7, 2021, Styx announced via social media that they would be releasing an EP titled "The Same Stardust EP", which would feature two new tracks, as well as some live recordings. The EP was released on vinyl on June 12, 2021 exclusively in indie record stores as a part of RSD Drops for Record Store Day 2021. This is the first Styx release to use their original band logo since "The Complete Wooden Nickel Recordings" in 2005.


title: Styx (band)

text: From April 30, 2021, through May 5, 2021, Styx posted artwork on social media that included a countdown in the corner that would eventually lead to the revealing of their new album "Crash of the Crown", revealed on May 6, 2021. With the reveal, they released the album's title track on streaming platforms. The Prog Report reviewed the album saying it "stands as one of the very finest in their catalogue."


title: Styx (band)

text: After first producing "The Mission" and "Crash of the Crown" and joining Styx on stage in Las Vegas to play "The Mission" in its entirety on January 23, 2019, guitarist Will Evankovich joined Styx for their 2021 summer tour that found them back on the road.


title: Styx (band)

text: On June 5, 2022 Styx was inducted into the Illinois Rock & Roll Museum Hall of Fame. That same night Dennis DeYoung was additionally inducted as a songwriter.


title: Styx (band)

text: From 1977 to 1981, Styx released four consecutive albums that have been certified Multi-Platinum, for at least 2 million units sold apiece, by the RIAA: "The Grand Illusion" (1977), "Pieces of Eight" (1978), "Cornerstone" (1979) and "Paradise Theatre" (1981).


title: Styx (band)

text: A longstanding, oft-repeated claim in the music industry and the mainstream press is that Styx were the first band to release four consecutive "Triple"-Platinum albums, signifying at least 3 million units sold. During the period when these albums charted, the RIAA's only certifications were for Gold (500,000 units sold) and Platinum (1 million). Multi-Platinum awards were introduced in late October 1984. Following this development, record companies submitted their most popular artists' sales records to accountants in order to achieve the new thresholds.


title: Styx (band)

text: Styx did score three Triple-Platinum albums—"The Grand Illusion" (1977), "Pieces of Eight" (1978) and "Paradise Theatre" (1981)—and one Double-Platinum album—"Cornerstone" (1979)—on the same date, November 14, 1984. Complete and detailed historical sales figures for record albums are not readily available to the public, but the certifications, which can be found at the RIAA site, show that the feat the band actually achieved was being the first group to be awarded four consecutive Multi-Platinum albums with three of those ranking better than Double Platinum. Styx achieved another Double-Platinum album—"Greatest Hits (Volume I)"—on August 23, 2005.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Henry IV (; 13 December 1553 – 14 May 1610), also known by the epithets Good King Henry or Henry the Great, was King of Navarre (as Henry III) from 1572 and King of France from 1589 to 1610. He was the first monarch of France from the House of Bourbon, a cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty. He was assassinated in 1610 by François Ravaillac, a Catholic zealot, and was succeeded by his son Louis XIII.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Henry was the son of Jeanne III of Navarre and Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme. He was baptised as a Catholic but raised in the Protestant faith by his mother. He inherited the throne of Navarre in 1572 on his mother's death. As a Huguenot, Henry was involved in the French Wars of Religion, barely escaping assassination in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. He later led Protestant forces against the French royal army.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Henry became king of France in 1589 upon the death of Henry III, his brother-in-law and distant cousin. He was the first French monarch from the House of Bourbon. Henry initially kept the Protestant faith (the only French king to do so) and had to fight against the Catholic League, which denied that he could wear France's crown as a Protestant. After four years of stalemate, he converted to Catholicism to obtain mastery over his kingdom (reportedly saying, "Paris is well worth a mass"). As a pragmatic politician (in the parlance of the time, a "politique"), he promulgated the Edict of Nantes (1598), which guaranteed religious liberties to Protestants, thereby effectively ending the French Wars of Religion.


title: Henry IV of France

text: An active ruler, Henry worked to regularise state finance, promote agriculture, eliminate corruption and encourage education. During his reign, the French colonization of the Americas truly began with the foundation of the colonies of Acadia and Canada at Port-Royal and Quebec, respectively. He is celebrated in the popular song "Vive le roi Henri" (which later became an anthem for the French monarchy during the reigns of his successors) and in Voltaire's "Henriade".


title: Henry IV of France

text: Henry de Bourbon was born in Pau, the capital of the joint Kingdom of Navarre with the sovereign principality of Béarn. His parents were Queen Joan III of Navarre (Jeanne d'Albret) and her husband, Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, King of Navarre. Although baptised as a Catholic, Henry was raised as a Protestant by his mother, who had declared Calvinism the religion of Navarre. As a teenager, Henry joined the Huguenot forces in the French Wars of Religion. On 9 June 1572, upon his mother's death, the 19-year-old became King of Navarre.


title: Henry IV of France

text: At Queen Joan's death, it was arranged for Henry to marry Margaret of Valois, daughter of Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici. The wedding took place in Paris on 18 August 1572 on the parvis of Notre Dame Cathedral.


title: Henry IV of France

text: On 24 August, the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre began in Paris. Several thousand Protestants who had come to Paris for Henry's wedding were killed, as well as thousands more throughout the country in the days that followed. Henry narrowly escaped death thanks to the help of his wife and his promise to convert to Catholicism. He was forced to live at the court of France, but he escaped in early 1576. On 5 February of that year, he formally abjured Catholicism at Tours and rejoined the Protestant forces in the military conflict. He named his 16-year-old sister, Catherine de Bourbon, regent of Béarn. Catherine held the regency for nearly thirty years.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Henry became heir presumptive to the French throne in 1584 upon the death of Francis, Duke of Anjou, brother and heir to the Catholic Henry III, who had succeeded Charles IX in 1574. Given that Henry of Navarre was the next senior agnatic descendant of King Louis IX, King Henry III had no choice but to recognise him as the legitimate successor.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Salic law barred the king's sisters and all others who could claim descent through only the female line from inheriting. Since Henry of Navarre was a Huguenot, the issue was not considered settled in many quarters of the country, and France was plunged into a phase of the Wars of Religion known as the War of the Three Henrys (1587–1589).


title: Henry IV of France

text: Henry I, Duke of Guise pushed for complete suppression of the Huguenots and had much support among Catholic loyalists. Political disagreements among the parties set off a series of campaigns and counter-campaigns that culminated in the Battle of Coutras.


title: Henry IV of France

text: In December 1588, Henry III had Henry I of Guise murdered, along with his brother, Louis, Cardinal de Guise. Henry III thought the removal of the brothers would finally restore his authority. However, the populace was horrified and rose against him. The title of the king was no longer recognized in several cities; his power was limited to Blois, Tours, and the surrounding districts. In the general chaos, Henry III relied on King Henry of Navarre and his Huguenots.


title: Henry IV of France

text: The two kings were united by a common interest—to win France from the Catholic League. Henry III acknowledged the King of Navarre as a true subject and Frenchman, not a fanatic Huguenot aiming for the destruction of Catholics. Catholic royalist nobles also rallied to the king's standard. With this combined force, the two kings marched to Paris. The morale of the city was low, and even the Spanish ambassador believed the city could not hold out longer than a fortnight. However, Henry III was assassinated shortly thereafter, on 2 August 1589, by a monk.


title: Henry IV of France

text: When Henry III died, Henry of Navarre nominally became king of France. The Catholic League, however, strengthened by support from outside the country—especially from Spain—was strong enough to prevent a universal recognition of his new title. Pope Sixtus V excommunicated Henry and declared him devoid of any right to inherit the crown. Most of the Catholic nobles who had joined Henry III for the siege of Paris also refused to recognize the claim of Henry of Navarre, and abandoned him. He set about winning his kingdom by military conquest, aided by English money and German troops. Henry's Catholic uncle Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon was proclaimed king by the League, but the Cardinal was Henry's prisoner at the time. Henry was victorious at the Battle of Arques and the Battle of Ivry, but failed to take Paris after besieging it in 1590.


title: Henry IV of France

text: When Cardinal de Bourbon died in 1590, the League could not agree on a new candidate. While some supported various Guise candidates, the strongest candidate was probably the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, the daughter of Philip II of Spain, whose mother Elisabeth had been the eldest daughter of Henry II of France. In the religious fervor of the time, the Infanta was recognized to be a suitable candidate, provided that she marry a suitable husband. The French overwhelmingly rejected Philip's first choice, Archduke Ernest of Austria, the Emperor's brother, also a member of the House of Habsburg. In case of such opposition, Philip indicated that princes of the House of Lorraine would be acceptable to him: the Duke of Guise; a son of the Duke of Lorraine; and the son of the Duke of Mayenne. The Spanish ambassadors selected the Duke of Guise, to the joy of the League. However, at that moment of seeming victory, the envy of the Duke of Mayenne was aroused, and he blocked the proposed election of a king.


title: Henry IV of France

text: The Parlement of Paris also upheld the Salic law. They argued that if the French accepted natural hereditary succession, as proposed by the Spaniards, and accepted a woman as their queen, then the ancient claims of the English kings would be confirmed, and the monarchy of centuries past would be nothing but an illegality. The Parlement admonished Mayenne, as lieutenant-general, that the kings of France had resisted the interference of the pope in political matters, and that he should not raise a foreign prince or princess to the throne of France under the pretext of religion. Mayenne was angered that he had not been consulted prior to this admonishment, but yielded, since their aim was not contrary to his present views.


title: Henry IV of France

text: On 25 July 1593, with the encouragement of his mistress, , Henry permanently renounced Protestantism and converted to Catholicism in order to secure his hold on the French crown, thereby earning the resentment of the Huguenots and his former ally Queen Elizabeth I of England. He was said to have declared that ("Paris is well worth a mass"), although there is some doubt whether he said this, or whether the statement was attributed to him by his contemporaries. His acceptance of Catholicism secured the allegiance of the vast majority of his subjects.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Since Reims, traditional coronation place of French kings, was still occupied by the Catholic League, Henry was crowned King of France at the Cathedral of Chartres on 27 February 1594. Pope Clement VIII lifted excommunication from Henry on 17 September 1595. He did not forget his former Calvinist coreligionists, however, and was known for his religious tolerance.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Henry IV successfully ended the civil wars. He and his ministers pacified Catholic leaders using bribes of about 7 million écus, which was more than France's revenue per annum. Huguenot leaders were placated by the Edict of Nantes, which had four separate documents. The articles laid down the tolerance which would be accorded to the Huguenots including the exact places where worship may or may not take place, three Protestant universities were recognized, and synods of the church would be allowed. The king also issued two personal documents (called "brevets") which recognized the Protestant establishment. The Edict of Nantes signed religious tolerance into law, and the brevets were an act of benevolence that created a Protestant state within France.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Despite this, it would take years to restore law and order to France. The Edict was met by opposition from the "parlements", objecting guarantees offered to the Protestants. The Parlement de Rouen did not formally register the edict until 1609, although it begrudgingly observed its terms.


title: Henry IV of France

text: During his reign, Henry IV worked through the minister Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully, to regularize state finance, promote agriculture, drain swamps, undertake public works, and encourage education. He established the "Collège Royal Henri-le-Grand" in La Flèche (today the Prytanée Militaire de la Flèche). He and Sully protected forests from further devastation, built a system of tree-lined highways, and constructed bridges and canals. He had a 1200-metre canal built in the park at the Château Fontainebleau (which may be fished today) and ordered the planting of pines, elms, and fruit trees.


title: Henry IV of France

text: The King restored Paris as a great city, with the Pont Neuf, which still stands today, constructed over the river Seine to connect the Right and Left Banks of the city. Henry IV also had the "Place Royale" built (since 1800 known as Place des Vosges), and added the "Grande Galerie" to the Louvre Palace. More than 400 metres long and thirty-five metres wide, this huge addition was built along the bank of the Seine River. At the time it was the longest edifice of its kind in the world. King Henry IV, a promoter of the arts by all classes of people, invited hundreds of artists and craftsmen to live and work on the building's lower floors. This tradition continued for another two hundred years, until Emperor Napoleon I banned it. The art and architecture of his reign have become known as the "Henry IV style" since that time.


title: Henry IV of France

text: An economic policy enacted by Henry IV was to reduce the amount of funds spent on imports of foreign goods and instead manufacture and grow those goods in France. He accomplished this in a couple of ways. Sumptuary laws were passed limiting the use of gold and silver cloth, which had to be imported. He also built royal factories to produce luxury commodities sought by the aristocracy: crystal glass, silk, satin, and tapestries (at Gobelins Manufactory and Savonnerie de Chaillot workshops. The king established a Commission that re-established silk weaving in Tours and Lyon, and increased linen production in Picardy and Brittany. To promote agriculture, they distributed 16,000 free copies of "The Theatre of Agriculture" by Olivier de Serres, a manual that explained agricultural concepts.


title: Henry IV of France

text: King Henry's vision extended beyond France, and he financed several expeditions of Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Monts and Samuel de Champlain to North America. France laid claim to New France (now Canada).


title: Henry IV of France

text: During the reign of Henry IV, rivalry continued among France, the Habsburg rulers of Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire for the mastery of Western Europe. The conflict was not resolved until after the Thirty Years' War.


title: Henry IV of France

text: During Henry's struggle for the crown, Spain had been the principal backer of the Catholic League, and it tried to thwart Henry. Under the Duke of Parma, an army from the Spanish Netherlands intervened in 1590 against Henry and foiled his siege of Paris. Another Spanish army helped the nobles opposing Henry to win the Battle of Craon against his troops in 1592.


title: Henry IV of France

text: After Henry's coronation, the war continued because there was an official tug-of-war between the French and Spanish states, but after victory at the Siege of Amiens in September 1597 the Peace of Vervins was signed in 1598. This enabled him to turn his attention to Savoy, with which he also had been fighting. Their conflicts were settled in the Treaty of Lyon of 1601, which mandated territorial exchanges between France and the Duchy of Savoy.


title: Henry IV of France

text: A major problem that Henry IV faced was known as the Spanish Road, which followed Spanish territory through Savoy to the Low Countries. His first opportunity in taking down parts of the Spanish Road was in a dispute over the ownership of the marquisate of Saluzzo. The last marquis left Saluzzo to the French crown in 1548 (when Savoy was occupied completely by France) but in absence of strong control during the Wars of Religion, the territory's ownership was disputed. The matter was placed before papal arbitration since the duke of Savoy was reluctant to recognize France's claim to the territory. He offered to cede Bresse to France if he could retain Saluzzo. Henri IV accepted this but Spain pointed out that ceding Bresse would remove a vital part of the Spanish Road. Spain promised the Duke full support if he rejected the agreement, and he did so. Henry IV was already at Lyon and had soldiers ready. Four days after the duke formally rejected the agreement, Henry IV launched an invasion of fifty thousand men against the duchy and in the next week, almost every area west of the Alps was French territory. In January 1601, Henry accepted an offer of papal arbitration in the dispute and gained not only Bresse, but Bugey and Gex. Savoy retained a narrow corridor of territory, the Val de Chézery. This allowed Spanish troops to cross from Lombardy to Franche Comté without going through France, but at this point the Spanish Road was just a single bridge across the Rhône River.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Even though the Saluzzo conflict was Henry IV's last major military operation, he still continued to try and counter Spain by providing subsidies to its enemies. He generously assisted the Dutch, and paid them over 12 million livres between 1598 and 1610. Some years, the payment was 10% of France's total annual budget. France also sent subsidies to Geneva after the Duke of Savoy's attempt to capture the city in 1602.


title: Henry IV of France

text: In 1609 Henry's intervention helped to settle the War of the Jülich Succession through diplomatic means.


title: Henry IV of France

text: It was widely believed that in 1610 Henry was preparing to go to war against the Holy Roman Empire. The preparations were terminated by his assassination, however, and the subsequent rapprochement with Spain under the regency of Marie de' Medici.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Even before Henry's accession to the French throne, the French Huguenots were in contact with Aragonese Moriscos in plans against the Habsburg government of Spain in the 1570s. Around 1575, plans were made for a combined attack of Aragonese Moriscos and Huguenots from Béarn under Henry against Spanish Aragon, in agreement with the king of Algiers and the Ottoman Empire, but this project floundered with the arrival of John of Austria in Aragon and the disarmament of the Moriscos. In 1576, a three-pronged fleet from Constantinople was planned to disembark between Murcia and Valencia while the French Huguenots would invade from the north and the Moriscos accomplish their uprising, but the Ottoman fleet failed to arrive.


title: Henry IV of France

text: After his crowning, Henry continued the policy of a Franco-Ottoman alliance and received an embassy from Sultan Mehmed III in 1601. In 1604, a "Peace Treaty and Capitulation" was signed between Henry IV and the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I. It granted numerous advantages to France in the Ottoman Empire.


title: Henry IV of France

text: In 1606–07, Henry IV sent Arnoult de Lisle as Ambassador to Morocco to obtain the observance of past friendship treaties. An embassy was sent to Tunisia in 1608 led by François Savary de Brèves.


title: Henry IV of France

text: During the reign of Henry IV, various enterprises were set up to develop trade with faraway lands. In December 1600, a company was formed through the association of Saint-Malo, Laval, and Vitré to trade with the Moluccas and Japan. Two ships, the "Croissant" and the "Corbin", were sent around the Cape of Good Hope in May 1601. The "Corbin" was wrecked in the Maldives, leading to the adventure of François Pyrard de Laval, who managed to return to France in 1611. The "Croissant", carrying François Martin de Vitré, reached Ceylon and traded with Aceh in Sumatra, but was captured by the Dutch on the return leg at Cape Finisterre. François Martin de Vitré was the first Frenchman to write an account of travels to the Far East in 1604, at the request of Henry IV, and from that time numerous accounts on Asia would be published.


title: Henry IV of France

text: From 1604 to 1609, following the return of François Martin de Vitré, Henry attempted to set up a French East India Company on the model of England and the Netherlands. On 1 June 1604, he issued letters patent to Dieppe merchants to form the Dieppe Company, giving them exclusive rights to Asian trade for 15 years. No ships were sent, however, until 1616. In 1609, another adventurer, Pierre-Olivier Malherbe, returned from a circumnavigation of the globe and informed Henry of his adventures. He had visited China and India, and had an encounter with Akbar.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Historians have made the assertion that Henry IV was a convinced Calvinist, only changing his formal religious allegiance to adjust, suit or achieve his political goals.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Henry IV was baptized as a Catholic on 5 January 1554. He was raised in the Reformed Tradition by his mother Jeanne III of Navarre. In 1572, after the massacre of French Calvinists, he was forced by Catherine de' Medici and other powerful Catholic royalty to convert. In 1576, as he managed to escape from Paris, he abjured Catholicism and returned to Calvinism. In 1593, in order to gain recognition as King of France, he converted again to Catholicism. Although a formal Catholic, he valued his Calvinist upbringing and was tolerant toward the Huguenots until his death in 1610, and issued the Edict of Nantes which granted many concessions to them.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Henry was nicknamed "the Great" ("Henri le Grand"), and in France is also called "le bon roi Henri" ("the good king Henry") or "le vert galant" ("The Green Gallant", for his numerous mistresses). In English he is most often referred to as Henry of Navarre.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Henry was the target of at least 12 assassination attempts, including one by Pierre Barrière in August 1593, and another by Jean Châtel in December 1594. Some of these assassination attempts were carried out against Henry because he was considered a usurper by some Catholics and a traitor by some Protestants.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Henry was killed in Paris on 14 May 1610 by François Ravaillac, a Catholic zealot who stabbed him in the Rue de la Ferronnerie. Henry's coach was stopped by traffic congestion associated with the Queen's coronation ceremony, as depicted in the engraving by Gaspar Bouttats. Hercule de Rohan, duc de Montbazon, was with him when he was killed; Montbazon was wounded, but survived. Ravaillac was immediately captured, and executed days later. Henry was buried at the Saint Denis Basilica.


title: Henry IV of France

text: In 1614, four years after Henry IV's death, a statue was erected in his honour on the Pont Neuf. During the early phase of the French Revolution when it aimed to create a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic, Henry IV was held up as an ideal that King Louis XVI was urged to emulate. When the Revolution radicalized and came to reject monarchy altogether, Henry IV's statue was torn down along with other royal monuments. It was nevertheless the first to be rebuilt, in 1818, and it still stands on the Pont Neuf today.


title: Henry IV of France

text: A cult of personality surrounding Henry IV emerged during the Bourbon Restoration. The restored Bourbons were keen to play down the controversial reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI, and instead lauded the reign of Henry IV. The song Marche Henri IV ("Long Live Henry IV") was popular during the Restoration. In addition, when Princess Caroline of Naples and Sicily (a descendant of his) gave birth to a male heir to the throne of France seven months after the assassination of her husband Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry, by a Republican fanatic, the boy was conspicuously named Henri in reference to his forefather Henry IV. The boy was also baptised with a spoon of Jurançon wine and some garlic, as is traditional in Béarn and Navarre. This imitated the quaint manner in which Henry IV had been baptised in Pau.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Henry serves as a loose inspiration for the character Ferdinand, King of Navarre, in William Shakespeare's 1590s play "Love's Labour's Lost"


title: Henry IV of France

text: The first edition of Henry IV's biography, "Histoire du Roy Henry le Grand", was published in Amsterdam in 1661. It was written by Hardouin de Péréfixe de Beaumont, successively bishop of Rhodez and archbishop of Paris, primarily for the edification of Louis XIV, grandson of Henry IV. A translation into English was made by James Dauncey for another grandson, King Charles II of England. An English edition was published at London in 1663.


title: Henry IV of France

text: On September 14, 1788, when anti-tax riots broke out during the incipient French Revolution, rioters demanded from those travelling through money for fireworks, and anyone riding in a carriage was forced to dismount to salute Henry IV.


title: Henry IV of France

text: King Henry's accomplishments were compiled in de Sully's "Royal Economies", published in 1611 after de Sully's fall from power. Upon closer historical analysis, it's clear that the memoirs are not entirely accurate. Forty percent of "Royal Economies" was made up of official documents from the reign of Henry IV, but subsequent research has shown that many were altered or even forged to make Henry IV's accomplishments look more notable. As well as de Sully's own part in them.


title: Henry IV of France

text: On 18 August 1572, Henry married his second cousin Margaret of Valois; their childless marriage was annulled in 1599. His subsequent marriage to Marie de' Medici on 17 December 1600 produced six children:


title: Henry IV of France

text: Henry's first marriage was not a happy one, and the couple was childless. Henry and Margaret separated even before Henry acceded to the throne in August 1589; Margaret retired to the Château d'Usson in the Auvergne and lived there for many years. After Henry became king of France, it was of the utmost importance that he provide an heir to the crown to avoid the problem of a disputed succession.


title: Henry IV of France

text: Henry favoured the idea of obtaining an annulment of his marriage to Margaret and taking his mistress Gabrielle d'Estrées as his bride; after all, she had already borne him three children. Henry's councillors strongly opposed this idea, but the matter was resolved unexpectedly by Gabrielle's sudden death in the early hours of 10 April 1599, after she had given birth to a premature and stillborn son. His marriage to Margaret was annulled in 1599, and Henry married Marie de' Medici, daughter of Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Archduchess Joanna of Austria, in 1600.


title: Henry IV of France

text: For the royal entry of Marie into Avignon on 19 November 1600, the citizens bestowed on Henry the title of the "Hercule Gaulois" ("Gallic Hercules"), justifying the extravagant flattery with a genealogy that traced the origin of the House of Navarre to a nephew of Hercules' son Hispalus.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring one or two early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine and, through later folk traditions, has become a significant cultural, religious, and commercial celebration of romance and love in many regions of the world.


title: Valentine's Day

text: There are a number of martyrdom stories associated with various Valentines connected to February 14, including an account of the imprisonment of Saint Valentine of Rome for ministering to Christians persecuted under the Roman Empire in the third century. According to an early tradition, Saint Valentine restored sight to the blind daughter of his jailer. Numerous later additions to the legend have better related it to the theme of love: an 18th-century embellishment to the legend claims he wrote the jailer's daughter a letter signed "Your Valentine" as a farewell before his execution; another tradition posits that Saint Valentine performed weddings for Christian soldiers who were forbidden to marry.


title: Valentine's Day

text: The 8th century Gelasian Sacramentary recorded the celebration of the Feast of Saint Valentine on February 14. The day became associated with romantic love in the 14th and 15th centuries when notions of courtly love flourished, apparently by association with the "lovebirds" of early spring. In 18th-century England, it grew into an occasion in which couples expressed their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as "valentines"). Valentine's Day symbols that are used today include the heart-shaped outline, doves, and the figure of the winged Cupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten valentines have given way to mass-produced greeting cards. In Italy, Saint Valentine's Keys are given to lovers "as a romantic symbol and an invitation to unlock the giver's heart", as well as to children to ward off epilepsy (called Saint Valentine's Malady).


title: Valentine's Day

text: Saint Valentine's Day is not a public holiday in any country, although it is an official feast day in the Anglican Communion and the Lutheran Church. Many parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church also celebrate Saint Valentine's Day on July 6 in honor of Roman presbyter Saint Valentine, and on July 30 in honor of Hieromartyr Valentine, the Bishop of Interamna (modern Terni).


title: Valentine's Day

text: Numerous early Christian martyrs were named Valentine. The Valentines honored on February 14 are Valentine of Rome ("Valentinus presb. m. Romae") and Valentine of Terni ("Valentinus ep. Interamnensis m. Romae"). Valentine of Rome was a priest in Rome who was martyred in 269 and was added to the calendar of saints by Pope Gelasius I in 496 and was buried on the Via Flaminia. The relics of Saint Valentine were kept in the Church and Catacombs of San Valentino in Rome, which "remained an important pilgrim site throughout the Middle Ages until the relics of St. Valentine were transferred to the church of Santa Prassede during the pontificate of Nicholas IV". The flower-crowned skull of Saint Valentine is exhibited in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome. Other relics are found at Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin, Ireland.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Valentine of Terni became bishop of Interamna (now Terni, in central Italy) and is said to have been martyred during the persecution under Emperor Aurelian in 273. He is buried on the Via Flaminia, but in a different location from Valentine of Rome. His relics are at the Basilica of Saint Valentine in Terni ("Basilica di San Valentino"). Professor Jack B. Oruch of the University of Kansas notes that "abstracts of the acts of the two saints were in nearly every church and monastery of Europe." The "Catholic Encyclopedia" also speaks of a third saint named Valentine who was mentioned in early martyrologies under date of February 14. He was martyred in Africa with a number of companions, but nothing more is known about him. A relic claimed to be Saint Valentine of Terni's head was preserved in the abbey of New Minster, Winchester, and venerated.


title: Valentine's Day

text: February 14 is celebrated as St. Valentine's Day in various Christian denominations; it has, for example, the rank of 'commemoration' in the calendar of saints in the Anglican Communion. In addition, the feast day of Saint Valentine is also given in the calendar of saints of the Lutheran Church. However, in the 1969 revision of the Roman Catholic Calendar of Saints, the feast day of Saint Valentine on February 14 was removed from the General Roman Calendar and relegated to particular (local or even national) calendars for the following reason: "Though the memorial of Saint Valentine is ancient, it is left to particular calendars, since, apart from his name, nothing is known of Saint Valentine except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on February 14."


title: Valentine's Day

text: The feast day is still celebrated in Balzan (Malta) where relics of the saint are claimed to be found, and also throughout the world by Traditionalist Catholics who follow the older, pre-Second Vatican Council calendar (see General Roman Calendar of 1960).


title: Valentine's Day

text: In the Eastern Orthodox Church, St. Valentine is recognized on July 6, in which Saint Valentine, the Roman presbyter, is honoured; in addition, the Eastern Orthodox Church observes the feast of Hieromartyr Valentine, Bishop of Interamna, on July 30.


title: Valentine's Day

text: J.C. Cooper, in "The Dictionary of Christianity", writes that Saint Valentine was "a priest of Rome who was imprisoned for succouring persecuted Christians." Contemporary records of Saint Valentine were most probably destroyed during this Diocletianic Persecution in the early 4th century. In the 5th or 6th century, a work called "Passio Marii et Marthae" published a story of martyrdom for Saint Valentine of Rome, perhaps by borrowing tortures that happened to other saints, as was usual in the literature of that period. The same events are also found in "Bede's Martyrology", which was compiled in the 8th century. It states that Saint Valentine was persecuted as a Christian and interrogated by Roman Emperor Claudius II in person. Claudius was impressed by Valentine and had a discussion with him, attempting to get him to convert to Roman paganism in order to save his life. Valentine refused and tried to convert Claudius to Christianity instead. Because of this, he was executed. Before his execution, he is reported to have performed a miracle by healing Julia, the blind daughter of his jailer Asterius. The jailer's daughter and his forty-six member household (family members and servants) came to believe in Jesus and were baptized.


title: Valentine's Day

text: A later "Passio" repeated the legend, adding that Pope Julius I built a church over his sepulchre (it is a confusion with a 4th-century tribune called Valentino who donated land to build a church at a time when Julius was a Pope). The legend was picked up as fact by later martyrologies, starting with Bede's martyrology in the 8th century. It was repeated in the 13th century, in "The Golden Legend".


title: Valentine's Day

text: There is an additional embellishment to "The Golden Legend", which according to Henry Ansgar Kelly, was added in the 18th century and widely repeated. On the evening before Valentine was to be executed, he is supposed to have written the first "valentine" card himself, addressed to the daughter of his jailer Asterius, who was no longer blind, signing as "Your Valentine." The expression "From your Valentine" was later adopted by modern Valentine letters. This legend has been published by both American Greetings and The History Channel.


title: Valentine's Day

text: John Foxe, an English historian, as well as the Order of Carmelites, state that Saint Valentine was buried in the Church of Praxedes in Rome, located near the cemetery of Saint Hippolytus. This order says that according to legend, "Julia herself planted a pink-blossomed almond tree near his grave. Today, the almond tree remains a symbol of abiding love and friendship."


title: Valentine's Day

text: Another embellishment suggests that Saint Valentine performed clandestine Christian weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry. The Roman Emperor Claudius II supposedly forbade this in order to grow his army, believing that married men did not make for good soldiers. However, George Monger writes that this marriage ban was never issued and that Claudius II told his soldiers to take two or three women for themselves after his victory over the Goths.


title: Valentine's Day

text: According to legend, in order "to remind these men of their vows and God's love, Saint Valentine is said to have cut hearts from parchment", giving them to these soldiers and persecuted Christians, a possible origin of the widespread use of hearts on St. Valentine's Day.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Saint Valentine supposedly wore a purple amethyst ring, customarily worn on the hands of Christian bishops with an image of Cupid engraved in it, a recognizable symbol associated with love that was legal under the Roman Empire; Roman soldiers would recognize the ring and ask him to perform marriage for them. Probably due to the association with Saint Valentine, amethyst has become the birthstone of February, which is thought to attract love.


title: Valentine's Day

text: While the European folk traditions connected with Saint Valentine and St. Valentine's Day have become marginalized by modern customs connecting the day with romantic love, there are still some connections with the advent of spring.


title: Valentine's Day

text: While the custom of sending cards, flowers, chocolates and other gifts originated in the UK, Valentine's Day still remains connected with various regional customs in England. In Norfolk, a character called 'Jack' Valentine knocks on the rear door of houses leaving sweets and presents for children. Although he was leaving treats, many children were scared of this mystical person.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In Slovenia, Saint Valentine or Zdravko was one of the saints of spring, the saint of good health and the patron of beekeepers and pilgrims.


title: Valentine's Day

text: A proverb says that "Saint Valentine brings the keys of roots". Plants and flowers start to grow on this day. It has been celebrated as the day when the first work in the vineyards and in the fields commences. It is also said that birds propose to each other or marry on that day. Another proverb says ""Valentin – prvi spomladin"" ("Valentine – the first spring saint"), as in some places (especially White Carniola), Saint Valentine marks the beginning of spring. Valentine's Day has only recently been celebrated as the day of love. The day of love was traditionally March 12, the Saint Gregory's day, or February 22, Saint Vincent's Day. The patron of love was Saint Anthony, whose day has been celebrated on June 13.


title: Valentine's Day

text: The "Feast" (Latin: "in natali", lit.: on the birthday) of Saint Valentine originated in Christendom and has been marked by the Western Church of Christendom in honour of one of the Christian martyrs named Valentine, as recorded in the 8th century Gelasian Sacramentary. In Ancient Rome, Lupercalia was observed February 13–15 on behalf of Pan & Juno, pagan gods of love, marriage & fertility. It was a rite connected to purification and health, and had only slight connection to fertility (as a part of health) and none to love. The celebration of Saint Valentine is not known to have had any romantic connotations until Chaucer's poetry about "Valentine's Day" in the 14th century, some seven hundred years after celebration of Lupercalia is believed to have ceased. Lupercalia was a festival local to the city of Rome. The more general Festival of Juno Februa, meaning "Juno the purifier" or "the chaste Juno", was celebrated on February 13–14. Although the Pope Gelasius I (492–496) article in the Catholic Encyclopedia says that he abolished Lupercalia, Sioux City UMC Professor Bruce Forbes wrote that "no evidence" has been demonstrated to link St. Valentine's Day and the rites of the ancient Roman purification festival of Lupercalia, despite claims by many authors to the contrary.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Some researchers have theorized that Gelasius I replaced Lupercalia with the celebration of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and claim a connection to the 14th century's connotations of romantic love, but there is no historical indication that he ever intended such a thing. Also, the dates do not fit because at the time of Gelasius I, the feast was only celebrated in Jerusalem, and it was on February 14 only because Jerusalem placed the Nativity of Jesus (Christmas) on January 6. Although it was called "Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary", it also dealt with the presentation of Jesus at the temple. Jerusalem's Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary on February 14 became the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple on February 2 as it was introduced to Rome and other places in the sixth century, after Gelasius I's time.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Alban Butler in his "The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints" (1756–1759) claimed without proof that men and women in Lupercalia drew names from a jar to make couples, and that modern Valentine's letters originated from this custom. In reality, this practice originated in the Middle Ages, with no link to Lupercalia, with men drawing the names of girls at random to couple with them. This custom was combated by priests, for example by Frances de Sales around 1600, apparently by replacing it with a religious custom of girls drawing the names of apostles from the altar. However, this religious custom is recorded as soon as the 13th century in the life of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, so it could have a different origin.


title: Valentine's Day

text: The first recorded association of Valentine's Day with romantic love is believed to be in the "Parliament of Fowls" (1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer, a dream vision portraying a parliament for birds to choose their mates. Honoring the first anniversary of the engagement of fifteen-year-old King Richard II of England to fifteen-year-old Anne of Bohemia, Chaucer wrote (in Middle English):


title: Valentine's Day

text: "For this was on seynt Valentynes dayWhan every foul cometh there to chese his makeOf every kynde that men thynke mayAnd that so huge a noyse gan they makeThat erthe, and eyr, and tre, and every lakeSo ful was, that unethe was there spaceFor me to stonde, so ful was al the place."


title: Valentine's Day

text: "For this was on Saint Valentine's DayWhen every bird comes there to choose his matchOf every kind that men may think ofAnd that so huge a noise they began to makeThat earth and air and tree and every lakeWas so full, that not easily was there spaceFor me to stand—so full was all the place."


title: Valentine's Day

text: Readers have uncritically assumed that Chaucer was referring to February 14 as Valentine's Day. Henry Ansgar Kelly has observed that Chaucer might have had in mind the feast day of St. Valentine of Genoa, an early bishop of Genoa who died around AD 307; it was probably celebrated on 3 May. A treaty providing for Richard II and Anne's marriage, the subject of the poem, was signed on May 2, 1381.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Jack B. Oruch notes that the date on which spring begins has changed since Chaucer's time because of the precession of the equinoxes and the introduction of the more accurate Gregorian calendar only in 1582. On the Julian calendar in use in Chaucer's time, February 14 would have fallen on the date now called February 23, a time when some birds have started mating and nesting in England.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Chaucer's "Parliament of Fowls" refers to a supposedly established tradition, but there is no record of such a tradition before Chaucer. The speculative derivation of sentimental customs from the distant past began with 18th-century antiquaries, notably Alban Butler, the author of "Butler's Lives of Saints", and have been perpetuated even by respectable modern scholars. Most notably, "the idea that Valentine's Day customs perpetuated those of the Roman Lupercalia has been accepted uncritically and repeated, in various forms, up to the present".


title: Valentine's Day

text: Three other authors who made poems about birds mating on St. Valentine's Day around the same years: Otton de Grandson from Savoy, John Gower from England, and a knight called Pardo from Valencia. Chaucer most probably predated all of them; but due to the difficulty of dating medieval works, it is not possible to ascertain which of the four may have influenced the others.


title: Valentine's Day

text: The earliest description of February 14 as an annual celebration of love appears in the "Charter of the Court of Love". The charter, allegedly issued by Charles VI of France at Mantes-la-Jolie in 1400, describes lavish festivities to be attended by several members of the royal court, including a feast, amorous song and poetry competitions, jousting and dancing. Amid these festivities, the attending ladies would hear and rule on disputes from lovers. No other record of the court exists, and none of those named in the charter were present at Mantes except Charles's queen, Isabeau of Bavaria, who may well have imagined it all while waiting out a plague.


title: Valentine's Day

text: The earliest surviving valentine is a 15th-century rondeau written by Charles, Duke of Orléans to his wife, which commences.


title: Valentine's Day

text: The earliest surviving valentines in English appear to be those in the "Paston Letters", written in 1477 by Margery Brewes to her future husband John Paston "my right well-beloved Valentine".


title: Valentine's Day

text: John Donne used the legend of the marriage of the birds as the starting point for his epithalamion celebrating the marriage of Elizabeth, daughter of James I of England, and Frederick V, Elector Palatine, on Valentine's Day:


title: Valentine's Day

text: The verse "Roses are red" echoes conventions traceable as far back as Edmund Spenser's epic "The Faerie Queene" (1590):


title: Valentine's Day

text: The modern cliché Valentine's Day poem can be found in "Gammer Gurton's Garland" (1784), a collection of English nursery rhymes published in London by Joseph Johnson:


title: Valentine's Day

text: In 1797, a British publisher issued "The Young Man's Valentine Writer", which contained scores of suggested sentimental verses for the young lover unable to compose his own. Printers had already begun producing a limited number of cards with verses and sketches, called "mechanical valentines." Paper Valentines became so popular in England in the early 19th century that they were assembled in factories. Fancy Valentines were made with real lace and ribbons, with paper lace introduced in the mid-19th century. In 1835, 60,000 Valentine cards were sent by post in the United Kingdom, despite postage being expensive.


title: Valentine's Day

text: A reduction in postal rates following Sir Rowland Hill's postal reforms with the 1840 invention of the postage stamp (Penny Black) saw the number of Valentines posted increase, with 400,000 sent just one year after its invention, and ushered in the less personal but easier practice of mailing Valentines. That made it possible for the first time to exchange cards anonymously, which is taken as the reason for the sudden appearance of racy verse in an era otherwise prudishly Victorian. Production increased, "Cupid's Manufactory" as Charles Dickens termed it, with over 3,000 women employed in manufacturing. The Laura Seddon Greeting Card Collection at Manchester Metropolitan University gathers 450 Valentine's Day cards dating from early nineteenth century Britain, printed by the major publishers of the day. The collection appears in Seddon's book "Victorian Valentines" (1996).


title: Valentine's Day

text: In the United States, the first mass-produced Valentines of embossed paper lace were produced and sold shortly after 1847 by Esther Howland (1828–1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts. Her father operated a large book and stationery store, but Howland took her inspiration from an English Valentine she had received from a business associate of her father. Intrigued with the idea of making similar Valentines, Howland began her business by importing paper lace and floral decorations from England. A writer in "Graham's American Monthly" observed in 1849, "Saint Valentine's Day ... is becoming, nay it has become, a national holyday." The English practice of sending Valentine's cards was established enough to feature as a plot device in Elizabeth Gaskell's "Mr. Harrison's Confessions" (1851): "I burst in with my explanations: 'The valentine I know nothing about.' 'It is in your handwriting', said he coldly." Since 2001, the Greeting Card Association has been giving an annual "Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary".


title: Valentine's Day

text: Since the 19th century, handwritten notes have given way to mass-produced greeting cards. In the UK, just under half of the population spend money on their Valentines, and around £1.9 billion was spent in 2015 on cards, flowers, chocolates and other gifts. The mid-19th century Valentine's Day trade was a harbinger of further commercialized holidays in the U.S. to follow.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In 1868, the British chocolate company Cadbury created Fancy Boxes – a decorated box of chocolates – in the shape of a heart for Valentine's Day. Boxes of filled chocolates quickly became associated with the holiday. In the second half of the 20th century, the practice of exchanging cards was extended to all manner of gifts, such as giving jewelry.


title: Valentine's Day

text: The U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that approximately 190 million valentines are sent each year in the US. Half of those valentines are given to family members other than husband or wife, usually to children. When the valentine-exchange cards made in school activities are included the figure goes up to 1 billion, and teachers become the people receiving the most valentines. The average valentine's spending has increased every year in the U.S, from $108 a person in 2010 to $131 in 2013.


title: Valentine's Day

text: The rise of Internet popularity at the turn of the millennium is creating new traditions. Millions of people use, every year, digital means of creating and sending Valentine's Day greeting messages such as e-cards, love coupons or printable greeting cards. Valentine's Day is considered by some to be a Hallmark holiday due to its commercialization.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In the modern era, liturgically, the Lutheran Church and Anglican Church have a service for St. Valentine's Day (the Feast of St. Valentine), which includes the optional rite of the renewal of marriage vows. In 2016, the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales established a novena prayer "to support single people seeking a spouse ahead of St Valentine's Day."


title: Valentine's Day

text: Valentine's Day customs – sending greeting cards (known as "valentines"), offering confectionery and presenting flowers – developed in early modern England and spread throughout the English-speaking world in the 19th century. In the later 20th and early 21st centuries, these customs spread to other countries, like those of Halloween, or than aspects of Christmas, (such as Santa Claus).


title: Valentine's Day

text: Valentine's Day is celebrated in many East Asian countries with Singaporeans, Chinese and South Koreans spending the most money on Valentine's gifts.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In most Latin American countries, for example, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, Saint Valentine's Day is known as "Día de los Enamorados" ('Day of Lovers') or as "Día del Amor y la Amistad" ('Day of Love and Friendship'). It is also common to see people perform "acts of appreciation" for their friends.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In Guatemala it is known as "Día del Cariño" ('Affection Day'). Some countries, in particular the Dominican Republic and El Salvador, have a tradition called "Amigo secreto" ("Secret friend"), which is a game similar to the Christmas tradition of Secret Santa.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In Brazil, the "Dia dos Namorados" (lit. "Lovers' Day", or "Boyfriends'/Girlfriends' Day") is celebrated on June 12, probably because that is the day before Saint Anthony's day, known there as the 'marriage saint', when traditionally many single women perform popular rituals, called "simpatias", in order to find a good husband or boyfriend. Couples exchange gifts, chocolates, cards, and flower bouquets. The February 14 Valentine's Day is not celebrated at all because it usually falls too little before or too little after the Brazilian Carnival – that can fall anywhere from early February to early March and lasts almost a week. Because of the absence of Valentine's Day and due to the celebrations of the Carnivals, Brazil was recommended by "U.S. News & World Report" as a tourist destination during February for Western singles who want to get away from the holiday.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Colombia celebrates "Día del amor y la amistad" on the third Saturday in September instead. "Amigo Secreto" is also popular there.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In the United States, about 190 million Valentine's Day cards are sent each year, not including the hundreds of millions of cards school children exchange.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Valentine's Day is a major source of economic activity, with total expenditures in 2017 topping $18.2 billion in 2017, or over $136 per person. This is an increase from $108 per person in 2010. In 2019, a survey by the National Retail Federation found that over the previous decade, the percentage of people who celebrate Valentine's Day had declined steadily. From their survey results, they found three primary reasons: over-commercialization of the holiday, not having a significant other, and not being interested in celebrating it.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In pre-Taliban years Koch-e-Gul-Faroushi (Flower Street) in the down town Kabul used to be adorned with innovative flower arrangements to attract Valentine's Day celebrating youth. In the Afghan tradition, love is often expressed through poetry. Some new generation budding poets like Ramin Mazhar, Mahtab Sahel are expressing themselves through poetry using Valentine's Day expressing concerns on any likelihood of erosion of freedoms. In their political comment they defy fear by saying I kiss you amid the Taliban


title: Valentine's Day

text: Valentine's Day was first celebrated in Bangladesh by Shafik Rehman, a journalist and editor of "Jaijaidin" in 1993. He was acquainted with Western culture by studying in London. He highlighted Valentine's Day to the Bangladeshi people through "Jaijaidin" newspaper. Rehman is called the "father of Valentine's Day in Bangladesh". On this day, people in various bonds including lovers, friends, husbands and wives, mothers and children, students and teachers express their love for each other with flowers, chocolates, cards and other gifts. On this day, various parks and recreation centers of the country are full of people of love. No public holiday is declared on this day in Bangladesh.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Some in Bangladesh feel that celebrating this day is not acceptable from a cultural and Islamic point of view. Before the celebration of Valentine's Day, February 14 was celebrated as the anti-authoritarian day in Bangladesh. However, that day is disregarded by people to celebrate Valentine's Day.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In Chinese, Valentine's Day is called lovers' festival (; Mandarin: "Qīng Rén Jié"; Hokkien: "Chêng Lîn Chiat"; Cantonese: "Chìhng Yàhn Jit"; Shanghainese "Xin Yin Jiq"). The "Chinese Valentine's Day" is the Qixi Festival (meaning "The Night of Sevens" ()), celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar. According to the legend, the Cowherd star and the Weaver Maid star are normally separated by the Milky Way (silvery river) but are allowed to meet by crossing it on the 7th day of the 7th month of the Chinese calendar.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In ancient India, there was a tradition of adoring Kamadeva, the lord of love — exemplified by the erotic carvings in the Khajuraho Group of Monuments and by the writing of the "Kamasutra". This tradition was lost around the Middle Ages, when Kamadeva was no longer celebrated, and public displays of sexual affection became frowned upon. This repression of public affections began to loosen in the 1990s.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Valentine's Day celebrations did not catch on in India until around 1992. It was spread due to the programs in commercial TV channels, such as MTV, dedicated radio programs, and love letter competitions, in addition to an economical liberalization that allowed the explosion of the valentine card industry. The celebration has caused a sharp change on how people have been displaying their affection in public since the Middle Ages.


title: Valentine's Day

text: On a 2018 online survey, it was found that 68% of the respondents do not wish to celebrate Valentine's Day. It can be also observed that different religious groups, including Hindu, Muslim and Christian people of India do not support Valentine's Day.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In modern times, Hindu and Islamic traditionalists have considered the holiday to be cultural contamination from the West, a result of globalization in India. Shiv Sena and the Sangh Parivar have asked their followers to shun the holiday and the "public admission of love" because of them being "alien to Indian culture". Although these protests are organized by political elites, the protesters themselves are middle-class Hindu men who fear that the globalization will destroy the traditions in their society: arranged marriages, Hindu joint families, full-time mothers, etc. Despite these obstacles, Valentine's Day is becoming increasingly popular in India.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Valentine's Day has been strongly criticized from a postcolonial perspective by intellectuals from the Indian left. The holiday is regarded as a front for "Western imperialism", "neocolonialism", and "the exploitation of working classes through commercialism by multinational corporations". It is claimed that as a result of Valentine's Day, the working classes and rural poor become more disconnected socially, politically, and geographically from the hegemonic capitalist power structure. They also criticize mainstream media attacks on Indians opposed to Valentine's Day as a form of demonization that is designed and derived to further the Valentine's Day agenda.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Right wing Hindu nationalists are also hostile. In February 2012, Subash Chouhan of the Bajrang Dal warned couples that "They cannot kiss or hug in public places. Our activists will beat them up".


title: Valentine's Day

text: The history of Valentine's Day in Iran dates back to the Qajar era of the latter half of the 19th century—Naser al-Din Shah Qajar did not take his wife with him during his trip to Europe and he sent her a greeting card from distance on Valentine's Day. This greeting card is available in Iranian museums.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Since the mid-2000s, Valentine's Day has become increasingly popular in Iran, especially among young people. However, it has also been the subject of heavy criticism from Iranian conservatives, who see it as part of the spread of "decadent" Western culture. Since 2011, authorities have attempted to discourage celebrations and impose restrictions on the sale and production of Valentine's Day-related goods, although the holiday remains popular as of 2018. Additionally, there have been efforts to revive the ancient Persian festival of Sepandārmazgān, which takes place around the same time, to replace Valentine's Day, although, as of 2016, this has also been largely unsuccessful.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In Israel, the Jewish tradition of Tu B'Av has been revived and transformed into the Jewish equivalent of Valentine's Day. It is celebrated on the 15th day of the month of Av (usually in late August). In ancient times girls would wear white dresses and dance in the vineyards, where the boys would be waiting for them (Mishna Taanith end of Chapter 4). Today, Tu B'Av is celebrated as a second holiday of love by secular people (along with Valentine's Day), and it shares many of the customs associated with Saint Valentine's Day in western societies. In modern Israeli culture Tu B'Av is a popular day to proclaim love, propose marriage, and give gifts like cards or flowers.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In Japan, Morozoff Ltd. introduced the holiday for the first time in 1936, when it ran an advertisement aimed at foreigners. Later, in 1953, it began promoting the giving of heart-shaped chocolates; other Japanese confectionery companies followed suit thereafter. In 1958, the Isetan department store ran a "Valentine sale". Further campaigns during the 1960s popularized the custom.


title: Valentine's Day

text: The custom that only women give chocolates to men may have originated from the translation error of a chocolate-company executive during the initial campaigns. In particular, office ladies give chocolate to their co-workers. Unlike western countries, gifts such as greeting cards, candies, flowers, or dinner dates are uncommon, and most of the gifts-related activity is about giving the right amount of chocolate to each person. Japanese chocolate companies make half their annual sales during this time of the year.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Many women feel obliged to give chocolates to all male co-workers, except when the day falls on a Sunday, a holiday. This is known as , from ("obligation") and , ("chocolate"), with unpopular co-workers receiving only "ultra-obligatory" () cheap chocolate. This contrasts with , chocolate given to a loved one. Friends, especially girls, may exchange chocolate referred to as .


title: Valentine's Day

text: In the 1980s, the Japanese National Confectionery Industry Association launched a successful campaign to make March 14 a "reply day", where men are expected to return the favour to those who gave them chocolates on Valentine's Day, calling it White Day for the color of the chocolates being offered. A previous failed attempt to popularize this celebration had been done by a marshmallow manufacturer who wanted men to return marshmallows to women.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Saint Valentine is the patron saint for a large part of the Lebanese population. Couples take the opportunity of Valentine's feast day to exchange sweet words and gifts as proof of love. Such gifts typically include boxes of chocolates, cupcakes, and red roses, which are considered the emblem of sacrifice and passion.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Lebanese people celebrate Valentine's Day in a different way in every city. In Beirut, men take women out to dine and may buy them a gift. Many women are asked to marry on that day. In Sidon, Valentine's Day is celebrated with the whole family – it is more about family love than a couple's love.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Islamic officials in West Malaysia warned Muslims against celebrating Valentine's Day, linking it with vice activities. Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said the celebration of romantic love was "not suitable" for Muslims. Wan Mohamad Sheikh Abdul Aziz, head of the Malaysian Islamic Development Department (Jakim), which oversees the country's Islamic policies said that a fatwa (ruling) issued by the country's top clerics in 2005 noted that the day 'is associated with elements of Christianity,' and 'we just cannot get involved with other religions' worshipping rituals.' Jakim officials planned to carry out a nationwide campaign called "Awas Jerat Valentine's Day" ("Mind the Valentine's Day Trap"), aimed at preventing Muslims from celebrating the day on February 14, 2011. Activities include conducting raids in hotels to stop young couples from having unlawful sex and distributing leaflets to Muslim university students warning them against the day.


title: Valentine's Day

text: On Valentine's Day 2011, West Malaysian religious authorities arrested more than 100 Muslim couples concerning the celebration ban. Some of them would be charged in the Shariah Court for defying the department's ban against the celebration of Valentine's Day.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In East Malaysia, the celebration are much more tolerated among young Muslim couples although some Islamic officials and Muslim activists from the West side have told younger generations to refrain from such celebration by organising da'wah and tried to spread their ban into the East. In both the states of Sabah and Sarawak, the celebration is usually common with flowers.


title: Valentine's Day

text: The concept of Valentine's Day was introduced into Pakistan during the late 1990s with special TV and radio programs. The Jamaat-e-Islami political party has called for the banning of Valentine's Day celebration. Despite this, the celebration is becoming popular among urban youth and the florists expect to sell a great number of flowers, especially red roses. The case is the same with card publishers.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In 2016, the local governing body of Peshwar officially banned the celebration of Valentine's Day in the city. The ban was also implemented in other cities such as Kohat by the local governments.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In 2017, the Islamabad High Court banned Valentine's Day celebrations in public places in Pakistan. More than 80% of Dawn readers polled on its website agreed with this decision.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In 2018, because of a petition by a citizen, Abdul Waheed, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority advised broadcasters and newspapers against airing any Valentine's Day celebrations.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In the Philippines, Valentine's Day is called "Araw ng mga Puso" in much the same manner as in the West. It is usually marked by a steep increase in the price of flowers, particularly red roses. It is the most popular day for weddings, with some localities offering mass ceremonies for no charge.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In Saudi Arabia, in 2002 and 2008, religious police banned the sale of all Valentine's Day items, telling shop workers to remove any red items, because the day is considered a Christian holiday. This ban has created a black market for roses and wrapping paper. In 2012, the religious police arrested more than 140 Muslims for celebrating the holiday, and confiscated all red roses from flower shops. Muslims are not allowed to celebrate the holiday, and non-Muslims can celebrate only behind closed doors.


title: Valentine's Day

text: "Saudi cleric Sheikh Muhammad Al-'Arifi said on Valentine's Day Eve that celebrating this holiday constitutes bid'a – a forbidden innovation and deviation from religious law and custom – and mimicry of the West."


title: Valentine's Day

text: However, in 2017 and 2018, after a fatwa was widely circulated, the religious police did not prevent Muslims from celebrating the day. In 2018, Sheikh Ahmed Qasim Al-Ghamdi, a Saudi cleric and former president of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, said that Valentine's Day is not haram and is compatible with Islamic values.


title: Valentine's Day

text: According to findings, Singaporeans are among the biggest spenders on Valentine's Day, with 60% of Singaporeans indicating that they would spend between $100 and $500 during the season leading up to the holiday.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In South Korea, women give chocolate to men on February 14, and men give non-chocolate candy to women on March 14 (White Day). On April 14 (Black Day), those who did not receive anything on February or March 14 go to a Chinese-Korean restaurant to eat black noodles (짜장면 "jajangmyeon") and lament their 'single life'. Koreans also celebrate Pepero Day on November 11, when young couples give each other Pepero cookies. The date '11/11' is intended to resemble the long shape of the cookie. The 14th of every month marks a love-related day in Korea, although most of them are obscure. From January to December: Candle Day, Valentine's Day, White Day, Black Day, Rose Day, Kiss Day, Silver Day, Green Day, Music Day, Wine Day, Movie Day, and Hug Day. Korean women give a much higher amount of chocolate than Japanese women.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In Taiwan, traditional Qixi Festival, Valentine's Day and White Day are all celebrated. However, the situation is the reverse of Japan's. Men give gifts to women on Valentine's Day, and women return them on White Day.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In Finland, Valentine's Day is called "ystävänpäivä", which means "Friend's Day". As the name indicates, this day is more about remembering friends, not significant others. In Estonia, Valentine's Day was originally called "valentinipäev" and later also "sõbrapäev" ('Friend's Day') as a calque of the Finnish term.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In France, a traditionally Catholic country, Valentine's Day is known simply as "Saint Valentin", and is celebrated in much the same way as other western countries. The relics of Saint Valentin de Terni, the patron of the St Valentine's Day, are in the Catholic church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste and Saint-Jean-l’Evangéliste located in the southern France town of Roquemaure, Gard. The celebrations of "Fête des Amoureux" takes place every two years on the Sunday closest to February 14. The village gets dressed in its 19th-century costume and put on the program with over 800 people.


title: Valentine's Day

text: St. Valentine's Day, or Ημέρα του Αγίου Βαλεντίνου in Greek tradition was not associated with romantic love. In the Eastern Orthodox church there is another Saint who protects people who are in love, Hyacinth of Caesarea (feast day July 3), but this was not widely known until the late 1990s In contemporary Greece, Valentine's Day is generally celebrated as in the common Western tradition.


title: Valentine's Day

text: On Saint Valentine's Day in Ireland, many individuals who seek true love make a Christian pilgrimage to the Shrine of St. Valentine in Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin, which is said to house relics of Saint Valentine of Rome; they pray at the shrine in hope of finding romance. There lies a book in which foreigners and locals have written their prayer requests for love.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Saint Valentine's Day was introduced to Poland together with the cult of Saint Valentine via Bavaria and Tyrol. However, it rose in popularity in the 1990s. The only (and the biggest) public celebration in Poland is held annually from 2002 in Chełmno under the name „Walentynki Chełmińskie” (Chełmno Valentine's). Because Chełmno's parish church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been holding the relic of St. Valentine since the Middle Ages, local cult of the saint has been combined with the Anglo-Saxon tradition.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In Portugal, the holiday is known as "Dia dos Namorados" (Lover's Day / Day of the Enamoured). As elsewhere, couples exchange gifts, but in some regions, women give a "lenço de namorados" ("lovers' handkerchief"), which is usually embroidered with love motifs.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In recent years, Romania has also started celebrating Valentine's Day. This has drawn backlash from several groups, institutions, and nationalist organizations like Noua Dreaptǎ, who condemn Valentine's Day for being superficial, commercialist, and imported Western kitsch. In order to counter the perceived denaturation of national culture, Dragobete, a spring festival celebrated in parts of Southern Romania, has been rekindled after having been ignored during the Communist years as the traditional Romanian holiday for lovers. The holiday is named after a character from Romanian folklore who was supposed to be the son of Baba Dochia. Its date used to vary depending on the geographical area, however nowadays it is commonly observed on February 24.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In Denmark and Norway, February 14 is known as "Valentinsdag", and is celebrated in much the same manner as in the United Kingdom. In Sweden it is called "Alla hjärtans dag" ("All Hearts' Day") but is not widely celebrated. A 2016 survey revealed that less than 50% of men and women were planning to buy presents for their partners. The holiday has only been observed since the 1960s.


title: Valentine's Day

text: The holiday was first introduced in Spain through a 1948 advertisement campaign by the department store chain Galerías Preciados, and had become widespread by the 1970s.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In the UK, just under half of the population spends money on their Valentines and around £1.3 billion is spent yearly on cards, flowers, chocolates, and other gifts, with an estimated 25 million cards being sent.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In Wales, some people celebrate Dydd Santes Dwynwen (St. Dwynwen's Day) on January 25 instead of (or as well as) Valentine's Day. The day commemorates St Dwynwen, the Welsh patron saint of love. The Welsh name for Saint Valentine is Sant Ffolant.


title: Valentine's Day

text: In a 2016 poll conducted by Channel 4 for Valentine's Day, Jane Austen’s line, “My heart is, and always will be, yours”, from her novel "Sense and Sensibility" as said by Edward Ferrars (Hugh Grant) to Elinor Dashwood (Emma Thompson) in the acclaimed 1995 film adaptation, was voted the most romantic line from literature, film, and TV by thousands of women.


title: Valentine's Day

text: The celebration of Valentine's Day has been banned in Indonesia, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia due to beliefs the holiday conflicts with Islamic culture.


title: Valentine's Day

text: Since 2009, certain practices pertaining to Valentine's Day (such as giving flowers, cards, or other gifts suggestive of Valentine's Day) are banned in Iran. Iran's Law Enforcement Force prosecutes distributors of goods with symbols associated with Valentine's Day. In 2021, the Prosecutor's Office of Qom, Iran, stated that it will prosecute those who disseminate and provide anti-cultural symbols like those of Valentine's Day. Although Valentine's Day is not accepted or approved by any institution in Iran and has no official status, it's highly accepted among a large part of the population. One of the reasons for Valentine's Day acceptance since the 2000s by the general population is the change in relations between the sexes, and because sexual relationship are no longer strictly limited to be within marriage.


title: Bonobo

text: The bonobo (; Pan paniscus), also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee, is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus "Pan," the other being the common chimpanzee ("Pan troglodytes"). While bonobos are now recognized as a distinct species in their own right, they were initially thought to be a subspecies of chimpanzee ("Pan troglodytes)" due to the physical similarities between the two species. Taxonomically, the members of the chimpanzee/bonobo subtribe Panina (composed entirely by the genus "Pan") are collectively termed "panins".


title: Bonobo

text: The bonobo is distinguished by relatively long legs, pink lips, dark face, tail-tuft through adulthood, and parted long hair on its head. The bonobo is found in a area of the Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central Africa. The species is frugivorous and inhabits primary and secondary forests, including seasonally inundated swamp forests. Because of political instability in the region and the timidity of bonobos, there has been relatively little field work done observing the species in its natural habitat.


title: Bonobo

text: Along with the common chimpanzee, the bonobo is the closest extant relative to humans. As the two species are not proficient swimmers, the formation of the Congo River 1.5–2 million years ago possibly led to the speciation of the bonobo. Bonobos live south of the river, and thereby were separated from the ancestors of the common chimpanzee, which live north of the river. There are no concrete data on population numbers, but the estimate is between 29,500 and 50,000 individuals. The species is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List and is threatened by habitat destruction and human population growth and movement, though commercial poaching is the most prominent threat. Bonobos typically live 40 years in captivity; their lifespan in the wild is unknown, but it is almost certainly much shorter.


title: Bonobo

text: Formerly the bonobo was known as the "pygmy chimpanzee", despite the bonobo having a similar body size to the common chimpanzee. The name "pygmy" was given by the German zoologist Ernst Schwarz in 1929, who classified the species on the basis of a previously mislabeled bonobo cranium, noting its diminutive size compared to chimpanzee skulls.


title: Bonobo

text: The name "bonobo" first appeared in 1954, when Austrian zoologist Eduard Paul Tratz and German biologist Heinz Heck proposed it as a new and separate generic term for pygmy chimpanzees. The name is thought to derive from a misspelling on a shipping crate from the town of Bolobo on the Congo River near the location from which the first bonobo specimens were collected in the 1920s.


title: Bonobo

text: The bonobo was first recognised as a distinct taxon in 1928 by German anatomist Ernst Schwarz, based on a skull in the Tervuren Museum in Belgium which had previously been classified as a juvenile chimpanzee ("Pan troglodytes"). Schwarz published his findings in 1929, classifying the bonobo as a subspecies of chimpanzee, "Pan satyrus paniscus". In 1933, American anatomist Harold Coolidge elevated it to species status. Major behavioural differences between bonobos and chimpanzees were first discussed in detail by Tratz and Heck in the early 1950s. American psychologist and primatologist Robert Yerkes was also one of the first to notice major behavioural differences.


title: Bonobo

text: Bonobos and chimpanzees are the two species which make up the genus "Pan", and are the closest living relatives to humans ("Homo sapiens").


title: Bonobo

text: The exact timing of the "Pan"–"Homo" last common ancestor is contentious, but DNA comparison suggests continual interbreeding between ancestral "Pan" and "Homo" groups, post-divergence, until about 4 million years ago.


title: Bonobo

text: DNA evidence suggests the bonobo and common chimpanzee species diverged approximately 890,000–860,000 years ago due to separation of these two populations possibly due to acidification and the spread of savannas at this time. Currently, these two species are separated by the Congo River, which had existed well before the divergence date, though ancestral "Pan" may have dispersed across the river using corridors which no longer exist. The first "Pan" fossils were reported in 2005 from the Middle Pleistocene (after the bonobo–chimpanzee split) of Kenya, alongside early "Homo" fossils.


title: Bonobo

text: According to A. Zihlman, bonobo body proportions closely resemble those of "Australopithecus", leading evolutionary biologist Jeremy Griffith to suggest that bonobos may be a living example of our distant human ancestors. According to Australian anthropologists Gary Clark and Maciej Henneberg, human ancestors went through a bonobo-like phase featuring reduced aggression and associated anatomical changes, exemplified in "Ardipithecus ramidus".


title: Bonobo

text: The first official publication of the sequencing and assembly of the bonobo genome was released in June 2012. The genome of a female bonobo from Leipzig Zoo was deposited with the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank) under the EMBL accession number AJFE01000000 after a previous analysis by the National Human Genome Research Institute confirmed that the bonobo genome is about 0.4% divergent from the chimpanzee genome.


title: Bonobo

text: Relationships of bonobos to humans and other apes can be determined by comparing their genes or whole genomes. While the first bonobo genome was published in 2012, a high-quality reference genome became available only in 2021. The overall nucleotide divergence between chimpanzee and bonobo based on the latter is 0.421 ± 0.086% for autosomes and 0.311 ± 0.060% for the X chromosome. The reference genome predicts 22,366 full-length protein-coding genes and 9,066 noncoding genes, although cDNA sequencing confirmed only 20,478 protein-coding and 36,880 noncoding bonobo genes, similar to the number of genes annotated in the human genome. Overall, 206 and 1,576 protein-coding genes are part of gene families that contracted or expanded in the bonobo genome compared to the human genome, respectively, that is, these genes were lost or gained in the bonobo genome compared to humans.


title: Bonobo

text: The bonobo is commonly considered to be more gracile than the common chimpanzee. Although large male chimpanzees can exceed any bonobo in bulk and weight, the two species broadly overlap in body size. Adult female bonobos are somewhat smaller than adult males. Body mass ranges from with an average weight of in males against an average of in females. The total length of bonobos (from the nose to the rump while on all fours) is . Male bonobos average when standing upright, compared to in females. The bonobo's head is relatively smaller than that of the common chimpanzee with less prominent brow ridges above the eyes. It has a black face with pink lips, small ears, wide nostrils, and long hair on its head that forms a parting. Females have slightly more prominent breasts, in contrast to the flat breasts of other female apes, although not so prominent as those of humans. The bonobo also has a slim upper body, narrow shoulders, thin neck, and long legs when compared to the common chimpanzee.


title: Bonobo

text: Bonobos are both terrestrial and arboreal. Most ground locomotion is characterized by quadrupedal knuckle-walking. Bipedal walking has been recorded as less than 1% of terrestrial locomotion in the wild, a figure that decreased with habituation, while in captivity there is a wide variation. Bipedal walking in captivity, as a percentage of bipedal plus quadrupedal locomotion bouts, has been observed from 3.9% for spontaneous bouts to nearly 19% when abundant food is provided. These physical characteristics and its posture give the bonobo an appearance more closely resembling that of humans than the common chimpanzee does. The bonobo also has highly individuated facial features, as humans do, so that one individual may look significantly different from another, a characteristic adapted for visual facial recognition in social interaction.


title: Bonobo

text: Multivariate analysis has shown bonobos are more neotenized than the common chimpanzee, taking into account such features as the proportionately long torso length of the bonobo. Other researchers challenged this conclusion.


title: Bonobo

text: Primatologist Frans de Waal states bonobos are capable of altruism, compassion, empathy, kindness, patience, and sensitivity, and described "bonobo society" as a "gynecocracy". Primatologists who have studied bonobos in the wild have documented a wide range of behaviors, including aggressive behavior and more cyclic sexual behavior similar to chimpanzees, even though bonobos show more sexual behavior in a greater variety of relationships. An analysis of female bonding among wild bonobos by Takeshi Furuichi stresses female sexuality and shows how female bonobos spend much more time in estrus than female chimpanzees.


title: Bonobo

text: Some primatologists have argued that de Waal's data reflect only the behavior of captive bonobos, suggesting that wild bonobos show levels of aggression closer to what is found among chimpanzees. De Waal has responded that the contrast in temperament between bonobos and chimpanzees observed in captivity is meaningful, because it controls for the influence of environment. The two species behave quite differently even if kept under identical conditions. A 2014 study also found bonobos to be less aggressive than chimpanzees, particularly eastern chimpanzees. The authors argued that the relative peacefulness of western chimpanzees and bonobos was primarily due to ecological factors. Bonobos warn each other of danger less efficiently than chimpanzees in the same situation.


title: Bonobo

text: Bonobos are unusual among apes for their matriarchal social structure (extensive overlap between the male and female hierarchies leads some to refer to them as gender-balanced in their power structure). Bonobos do not have a defined territory and communities will travel over a wide range. Due to the nomadic nature of the females and evenly distributed food in their environment, males do not gain any obvious advantages by forming alliances with other males, or by defending a home range, as chimpanzees do. Female bonobos possess sharper canines than female chimpanzees, further fueling their status in the group. Although a male bonobo is dominant to a female in a dyadic interaction, depending on the community, socially-bonded females may be co-dominant with males or dominant over them, even to the extent that females can coerce reluctant males into mating with them.


title: Bonobo

text: At the top of the hierarchy is a coalition of high-ranking females and males typically headed by an old, experienced matriarch who acts as the decision-maker and leader of the group. Female bonobos typically earn their rank through experience, age, and ability to forge alliances with other females in their group, rather than physical intimidation, and top-ranking females will protect immigrant females from male harassment. While bonobos are often called matriarchal, and while every community is dominated by a female, some males will still obtain a high rank and act as coalitionary partners to the alpha female, often taking initiative in coordinating the groups movements. These males may outrank not only the other males in the group, but also many females. Certain males alert the group to any possible threats, protecting the group from predators such as pythons and leopards.


title: Bonobo

text: Aggressive encounters between males and females are rare, and males are tolerant of infants and juveniles. A male derives his status from the status of his mother. The mother–son bond often stays strong and continues throughout life. While social hierarchies do exist, and although the son of a high ranking female may outrank a lower female, rank plays a less prominent role than in other primate societies. Relationships between different communities are often positive and affiliative, and bonobos are not a territorial species. Bonobos will also share food with others, even unrelated strangers. Bonobos exhibit paedomorphism (retaining infantile physical characteristics and behaviours), which greatly inhibits aggression and enables unfamiliar bonobos to freely mingle and cooperate with each other.


title: Bonobo

text: Males engage in lengthy friendships with females and, in turn, female bonobos prefer to associate with and mate with males who are respectful and easygoing around them. Because female bonobos can use alliances to rebuff coercive and domineering males and select males at their own leisure, they show preference for males who are not aggressive towards them.


title: Bonobo

text: Aging bonobos lose their playful streak and become noticeably more irritable in old age. Both sexes have a similar level of aggressiveness.


title: Bonobo

text: Bonobos live in a male philopatric society where the females immigrate to new communities while males remain in their natal troop. However, it is not entirely unheard of for males to occasionally transfer into new groups. Additionally, females with powerful mothers may remain in their natal clan.


title: Bonobo

text: Alliances between males are poorly developed in most bonobo communities, while females will form alliances with each other and alliances between males and females occur, including multisex hunting parties. There is a confirmed case of a grown male bonobo adopting his orphaned infant brother.


title: Bonobo

text: A mother bonobo will also support her grown son in conflicts with other males and help him secure better ties with other females, enhancing her chance of gaining grandchildren from him. She will even take measures such as physical intervention to prevent other males from breeding with certain females she wants her son to mate with. Although mothers play a role in aiding their sons, and the hierarchy among males is largely reflected by their mother's social status, some motherless males will still successfully dominate some males who do have mothers.


title: Bonobo

text: Bonobos are not known to kill each other, and are generally less violent than chimpanzees, yet aggression still manifests itself in this species. Although female bonobos dominate males and selectively mate with males who do not exhibit aggression toward them, competition between the males themselves is intense and high-ranking males secure more matings than low-ranking ones. Indeed, the size difference between male and female bonobos is in fact more pronounced in bonobos than it is in chimpanzees, as male bonobos do not form alliances and therefore have little incentive to hold back when fighting for access to females. Male bonobos are known to attack each other and inflict serious injuries such as missing digits, damaged eyes and torn ears. Some of these injuries may also occur when a male threatens the high ranking females and is injured by them, as the larger male is swarmed and outnumbered by these female mobs.


title: Bonobo

text: Due to the promiscuous mating behavior of female bonobos, a male cannot be sure which offspring are his. As a result, the entirety of parental care in bonobos is assumed by the mothers. However, bonobos are not as promiscuous as chimpanzees and slightly polygamous tendencies occur, with high-ranking males enjoying greater reproductive success than low-ranking males. Unlike chimpanzees, where any male can coerce a female into mating with him, female bonobos enjoy greater sexual preferences and can rebuff undesirable males, an advantage of female-female bonding, and actively seek out higher-ranking males.


title: Bonobo

text: Bonobo party size tends to vary because the groups exhibit a fission–fusion pattern. A community of approximately 100 will split into small groups during the day while looking for food, and then will come back together to sleep. They sleep in nests that they construct in trees.


title: Bonobo

text: Female bonobos more often than not secure feeding privileges and feed before males do, although they are rarely successful in one-on-one confrontations with males, a female bonobo with several allies supporting her has extremely high success in monopolizing food sources. Different communities favour different prey. In some communities females exclusively hunt and have a preference for rodents, in others both sexes hunt, and will target monkeys.


title: Bonobo

text: In captive settings, females exhibit extreme food-based aggression towards males, and forge coalitions against them to monopolize specific food items, often going as far as to mutilate any males who fail to heed their warning.


title: Bonobo

text: In wild settings, however, female bonobos will quietly ask males for food if they had gotten it first, instead of forcibly confiscating it, suggesting sex-based hierarchy roles are less rigid than in captive colonies.


title: Bonobo

text: Female bonobos are known to lead hunts on duikers and successfully defend their bounty from marauding males in the wild. They are more tolerant of younger males pestering them yet exhibit heightened aggression towards older males.


title: Bonobo

text: Sexual activity generally plays a major role in bonobo society, being used as what some scientists perceive as a greeting, a means of forming social bonds, a means of conflict resolution, and postconflict reconciliation. Bonobos are the only non-human animal to have been observed engaging in tongue kissing. Bonobos and humans are the only primates to typically engage in face-to-face genital sex, although a pair of western gorillas has also been photographed in this position.


title: Bonobo

text: Bonobos do not form permanent monogamous sexual relationships with individual partners. They also do not seem to discriminate in their sexual behavior by sex or age, with the possible exception of abstaining from sexual activity between mothers and their adult sons. When bonobos come upon a new food source or feeding ground, the increased excitement will usually lead to communal sexual activity, presumably decreasing tension and encouraging peaceful feeding.


title: Bonobo

text: More often than the males, female bonobos engage in mutual genital-rubbing behavior, possibly to bond socially with each other, thus forming a female nucleus of bonobo society. The bonding among females enables them to dominate most of the males. Adolescent females often leave their native community to join another community. This migration mixes the bonobo gene pools, providing genetic diversity. Sexual bonding with other females establishes these new females as members of the group.


title: Bonobo

text: Bonobo clitorises are larger and more externalized than in most mammals; while the weight of a young adolescent female bonobo "is maybe half" that of a human teenager, she has a clitoris that is "three times bigger than the human equivalent, and visible enough to waggle unmistakably as she walks". In scientific literature, the female–female behavior of bonobos pressing genitals together is often referred to as genito-genital (GG) rubbing. This sexual activity happens within the immediate female bonobo community and sometimes outside of it. Ethologist Jonathan Balcombe stated that female bonobos rub their clitorises together rapidly for ten to twenty seconds, and this behavior, "which may be repeated in rapid succession, is usually accompanied by grinding, shrieking, and clitoral engorgement"; he added that it is estimated that they engage in this practice "about once every two hours" on average. As bonobos occasionally copulate face-to-face, "evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk has suggested that the position of the clitoris in bonobos and some other primates has evolved to maximize stimulation during sexual intercourse". The position of the clitoris may alternatively permit GG-rubbings, which has been hypothesized to function as a means for female bonobos to evaluate their intrasocial relationships.


title: Bonobo

text: Bonobo males engage in various forms of male–male genital behavior. The most common form of male–male mounting is similar to that of a heterosexual mounting: one of the males sits "passively on his back [with] the other male thrusting on him", with the penises rubbing together due to both males' erections. In another, rarer form of genital rubbing, two bonobo males hang from a tree limb face-to-face while penis fencing. This also may occur when two males rub their penises together while in face-to-face position. Another form of genital interaction (rump rubbing) often occurs to express reconciliation between two males after a conflict, when they stand back-to-back and rub their scrotal sacs together, but such behavior also occurs outside agonistic contexts: Kitamura (1989) observed rump–rump contacts between adult males following sexual solicitation behaviors similar to those between female bonobos prior to GG-rubbing. Takayoshi Kano observed similar practices among bonobos in the natural habitat. Tongue kissing, oral sex, and genital massaging have also been recorded among male bonobos.


title: Bonobo

text: Wild females give birth for the first time at 13 or 14 years of age. Bonobo reproductive rates are no higher than those of the common chimpanzee. However, female bonobo oestrus periods are longer. During oestrus, females undergo a swelling of the perineal tissue lasting 10 to 20 days. The gestation period is on average 240 days. Postpartum amenorrhea (absence of menstruation) lasts less than one year and a female may resume external signs of oestrus within a year of giving birth, though the female is probably not fertile at this point. Female bonobos carry and nurse their young for four years and give birth on average every 4.6 years. Compared to common chimpanzees, bonobo females resume the genital swelling cycle much sooner after giving birth, enabling them to rejoin the sexual activities of their society. Also, bonobo females which are sterile or too young to reproduce still engage in sexual activity. Mothers will help their sons get more matings from females in oestrus.


title: Bonobo

text: Adult male bonobos have sex with infants, although without penetration. Adult females also have sex with infants, but less frequently. Infants are not passive participants. They quite often initiate contacts with both adult males and females, as well as with peers. They have also been shown to be sexually active even in the absence of any stimulation or learning from adults.