Valentine's Day by the numbers

Valentine's Day has arrived with its pink, white and red hearts all over businesses, chocolate roses, and more than a few real roses, too.

Among the traditions:

• Valentine's Day cards. From cute cards children give to their schoolmates to cards of love from partners, giving notes to a valentine remains popular. Around 40% of people will buy some type of greeting card on Valentine's Day, according to an article by CNBC.
• Candy. According to candyusa.com, 92% of Americans celebrate with chocolate and candy. The Valentine's Day season represents around $4 billion in confectionery sales each year.
• Heart-shaped box of chocolates. Who started those? Richard Cadbury. Cadbury was credited as the creator in 1868, according to an article by Food52. Now more than 36 million of these boxes are sold each year. Whether he was trying to corner the world of chocolate or just a hopeless romantic is unclear.
• Flowers. In a statistic by safnow.org, it is said that Valentine's Day is the No. 1 day each year for florist and flower sales. Roses of all types of colors take up 85% of sales with red roses taking the top spot with 65% of the sales.
• A night out. Valentine's Day is also a popular night out. So, what are the average wait times to sit down at a restaurant? In an article from 2019 by Restaurant Dive, Valentine's Day reservations were predicted to spike up to 433% from the average night. That's a lot of people wanting tables.

To think...Valentine's Day started because of a Roman priest who went against the wishes of authorities and performed secret weddings around A.D. 270 -- before he was scheduled to be beheaded on Feb. 14.