Once upon a time, in the kingdom of Kansas City, lived a greedy king. King Hallmark was a mighty monarch who ruled his land with excessive taxation and inflation of goods, pushing many of his people into poverty.

One day, the king decided that he wanted more treasure. He had taxed the people to their limits he knew; so he came up with another idea to extract what little was left from the citizens of Kansas City.

He summoned his chief scribe to his palace.

"We will be having a new feast day, peasant, and you will have specific duties to perform."

The little man twitched with his feather quill, "Whatever you deem, sire."

"You and your fellow scribes must write out parchments with sappy love sayings and pithy phrases. We will then sell them to the villagers at 5 gold pieces each," the king said.

"But, but, but, sire…Yesterday my writings only cost a pence, who will pay such a price for my nonsense on this day?"

"I do not pay you to think! Just do as you are ordered!" The king roared.

As the scribe hurried off, the king summoned his chief gardener.

"Gardener, for my new feast day, you will sell your flowers at market. You will fetch 80 gold pieces for a dozen of your most mediocre roses," the king ordered.

"Sire, are you certain of this decree? My flowers only fetched 9.99 gold pieces yesterday, who will pay such a mark-up?" The gardener asked, his shears shaking.

"Be gone with you, Sir F.T.D!"

F.T.D hurried away.

Next, the king called for his chief cook. She hobbled in front of him shaking at his wrath.

"Cook, you will prepare confections for the peasants. I want you to then place the confections into a golden box and sell them at market for 100 gold pieces."

Not wanting to question the orders of the king, the cook replied, "What would you like these confections to be called, Your Highness?"

The king regarded her for a moment, and replied, "You shall name them after my crazy sister in-law, Lady Godiva. Now, be gone with you."

The cook scrambled away to her kitchen.

"Now that I have the market prepared for this feast, I will need my chief sorcerer to come before me," the king reflected.

Moments later, the sorcerer appeared before the king in a cloud of blue smoke. "You summoned me, sire?"

"Yes, I need you to cast a spell over the entire kingdom. For on this one day in February, I wish for the ladies to become hyper-sensitive, nagging wenches. For the gentlemen, you must blanket them in a shroud of guilt, so that they release their satchel strings freely, just to get the wailing to stop. Are you up for such a task, sorcerer?"

"Indeed, sire. It shall be done."

The next day, the king and the sorcerer watched the activity at the marketplace. Paupers, tradesmen and noblemen all rushed the merchants, throwing gold pieces at them like rain. Sir Zale the blacksmith was overwhelmed with orders. Sir Ty the toymaker could not believe that grown men were buying his wares. Even the seamstress Victoria was inundated with requests for petticoats and corsets.

The sorcerer exclaimed, "Oh, Your Majesty, what a wonder lies before us! My magic is not so powerful as to create all of this spending madness. However were you able to dictate love and romance by just the sun dial?"

King Hallmark smiled sheepishly, as he regarded his over-flowing treasure chest.

"Why Magician, don’t you know that anything is possible when you wear the Gold Crown™?"

The End.