According to “TIME” Long ago, And when the Romans conscripted the Eros mythology, they chose to bring over the more recent iteration of the god as a cute little kid. They named him Cupid, a synonym for Eros that also translates to “desire.” (His mother was likewise Venus, the Roman version of the Greek Aphrodite.) For the Romans, the character of Cupid was always a cherubic little boy who followed his mother’s wishes to make people fall in love. It wasn’t just the Romans who became obsessed with the Greek portrayal of Cupid. Centuries later, Renaissance painters took up this imagery and depicted the Cupid figure as a child. This is seen in 1602 with Caravaggio’s Cupid, which showed a young, nude boy with wings and a bow. Valentine’s Day was already becoming popular in the 18th century, and by the turn of the 19th century, Cupid had become linked to the holiday for his love-creating abilities. It’s no surprise that when greeting-card manufacturers made products for the holiday, they included imagery of Cupid that was inspired by beloved Renaissance art, Samantha Bradbeer, the historian for Hallmark Cards, Inc.The industry really hit its stride in the 1850s after Congress voted to decrease postage rates in an effort to circumvent the privatization of the postal service. This postal reform made it possible for everyday Americans to send and receive mail—while the Industrial Revolution brought the advent of printing press technology.

So when Hallmark began manufacturing Valentine’s Day cards in 1916, this mass production meant sending postcards was much cheaper and easier. As Valentine’s Day became more convenient, Cupid imagery only continued to grow.

Valentine’s Day has remained one of Hallmark’s two biggest holidays, along with Christmas, since the company’s founding as a postcard company in 1910. In fact, industry-wide, around 145 million Valentine’s Day cards are sent annually—not including children’s classroom cards, Bradbeer says.

It may seem strange, still, that we would collectively associate a baby with a bow and arrow as a symbol of this extraordinarily popular holiday. But it’s actually quite simple. Though Roman and Greek traditions left us with this partly mischievous, partly powerful Cupid, he serves a different purpose in modern culture, Bradbeer believes. The Greek conception of Eros as a god who used his power for ill is not what Cupid stands for today. “Sometimes, people need a little bit of a push to make that first move — to better express themselves,” she says. “I think sometimes having Cupid depicted on the card behind a couple, [he is] kind of pushing them together to do just that: to express their love, their friendship.”