Red heart pierced by the Cupid’s arrow is a traditional symbol of Valentine’s Day. Heart symbolizes love and giving someone a heart means to hand over one’s existence to someone. A heart pierced by a Cupid’s arrow means that when someone presents a heart, the person takes the risk of being rejected and feeling hurt. Piercing arrow therefore symbolizes death and vulnerability of love. Some people also believe that the heart and arrow symbolizes the uniting of male and a female.

Today, one finds great use of red heart symbol especially heart shaped red balloons in Valentine’s Day decoration. Stuffed red heart decorated with a lace is a popular Valentine’s Day Gift.
The Origin of Valentine’s Day Hearts comes from around 12th Century people were not aware the function of heart was to circulate blood inside the human body. What they knew was that heart begins to beat faster when a person is upset or excited. They, therefore, derived that heart was the seat of emotions and feelings. Poets too eulogized the role of heart in feelings of love and romance and over the years this make believe connection between heart and love became deep seated in the minds of people. Today, even though it has been scientifically proved that emotions come from the brain heart remains a powerful symbol of love and Valentine’s Day.
A heart (red or pink) with an arrow piercing through it is the most common shape and look for a Valentines, and even candles, candies, cookies, cakes, figurines, stuffed images, etc. The heart is a symbol both of love and also vulnerability.

When you send someone a Valentine, you take a risk of being rejected and your feelings hurt. So a piercing arrow is a symbol of death and the vulnerability of love. On the other hand, the heart and arrow also symbolize the merging of the male and female as one.

In the 12th century, physicians believed that the heart was the seat of love and affection in the human body. But the actual biological shape of the human heart does not look like the heart as we see it today. Why? Well, some people are guessing that the Valentine heart-shape as we know it today was done by a doodler to represent the human female shape or the imprint of lips (wearing lipstick) made upon a piece of paper. Once again, it’s all on how you want to spin the story!