Valentine's Day symbols and icons of romantic love

14 February, 2013

Human beings are great at inventing symbols - visual, representational and abstract symbols. Valentine's Day is not an exception. Since, Valentine's Day is the celebration of romantic love, therefore, the main symbols of Valentine's Day are the cupid, rose, heart, love birds, pair of bees and kissing fishes.

A symbol is something that represents an idea, an action, an event, a process, or a physical entity to represent and evoke a mental image for it. The collection, study and art of creating symbols, is called cartography and universalized accepted symbols are called icons and legends.

For love, cupid - the winged, chubby and mischievous little angel, the son of Venus, with a bow and arrow pierces the hearts of his victims with his arrows. The belief that Cupid makes people fall in love is being held through ages.

For passion, intimacy, friendship, passionate love, roses and their gifting by lovers all around the world is common and cinema has popularized this symbol greatly. Red roses stand for passion, yellow for friendship and white for platonic love.

In literature, heart symbolizes love and for a union of two individuals, there is no other symbol as important as heart. And, a winded heart or the one pierced with arrow forms the most important symbol of Valentine's Day.

Love Birds, kissing fish and bees signify the urge of meeting and mating of opposite sexes. It is said that lovebirds can't think of life without their mates. So these are now symbols of love for reproduction.

Thus, over the years, Valentine's Day has acquired many different symbols that represent love, romance, and passion that are used in cards and messages or communication of feelings.