Valentine's day is today – February 14 – and a lot of us will be celebrating love in some way. Maybe you'll have a table for two at your favourite romantic restaurant. Maybe he or she will surprise you with flowers, chocolates or a special romantic gift.
There's the cards and the affection, and one thing's for certain – the flowers companies are going to make enough to be able to book themselves a very nice table for two.
But how is Valentine's day celebrated around the world? At the Datablog, we love mapping things and that's what we've done.
This article includes content provided by Spotify. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'.
For example, in Spain, you would be celebrating Valentine's today, the same as the rest of the Western world. That is unless you were in Catalonia, when it's called La Diada de Sant Jordi, and celebrated on April 23. You would be exchanging books as a gift on this day. Historically, men gave women roses, and women gave men a book to celebrate the occasion.
Closer to home, in Wales, you'd be waiting 11 months. Valentine's day is celebrated, but the Welsh also have St Dwynwen's day, or Dydd Santes Dwynwen. It's on January 25, and usually parties are held. Love spoons are a common gift to be given.
Across many Latin American countries, you can expect to be given a secret present in a custom reminiscent of Secret Santa - and we all know how painful that can be to guess if they'll like it.
In South Korea, lovers have two days of celebration a month apart. On February 14, women give chocolate to men. On March 14, known as White day, men give non-chocolate candy to women. It's not confined to the couples though. On April 14, the single people of South Korea unite over black noodles called Jajangmyeon, and mourn their single lives.
How do you celebrate Valentine's Day? Let us know.
More open data
Data journalism and data
visualisations from the Guardian
World government data
Search the
world's government data with our gateway
Development and aid data
Search
the world's global development data with our gateway
Can you do something with this data?
Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups
on our Flickr
group
Contact us at data@guardian.co.uk
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion