Valentine's Day in numbers

There's no doubt that Valentiene’s day is one of the American most popular holidays; more than 62% of Americans celebrate it by sending cards and flowers, giving candy or other gifts or enjoying romantic dinners (or the three!). But does anyone know the history behinds valentine’s day? Well, this celebration comes from the ancient Rome; during the reign of the emperor Claudio III, he diced to send all the young men to the war and for make them better soldiers, he decided to ban the marriage. Valentin, a friar, realized the injustice that this prohibition supposed for the young people and he decided to marry young couples secretly. He did this until he was find out by the emperor and imprisoned. But this is not all: in the prison, he fell in love with the daughter of the director of the prison and before be executed for breach of the rules, he wrote a love card to his love (and here comes the tradition of the love cards), and all of this pass the February 14: now known as Valentine's day. Even so, the tradition of the "romantic day" didn’t appear until the XVIII century.

Anyway, nowadays this holiday, especially in America, has been stablished like a consumer holiday. I found some interesting studies about the amount of money spent during the day and what impressed me the most is the next: each year, 1 billion of valentine’s cards are sent, more than any other holiday except Christmas. More than 33 million of heart chocolate boxes are sold, more than 220 million of roses are produced for the holiday and 4 million of dollars are expended in jewelry! American spends more than 20 billion of dollars on Valentine’s Day, what means 130 dollars per person each year! And at least, the "ultimate romantic gesture"; more than 6 million couples engaged this day.
This day supposed a big amount of money for the Americans and it shouldn’t be that way, I mean, is nice make a little detail to the person that you love, but have an average of 130 dollars per persona is a lot! Instead of wait for the day, Americans should fear it!