Hi haters. Please brace yourselves: I love Valentine’s Day.
It’s my favorite holiday, actually.
I know what you’re thinking. You, like most other sane people, think that you see Valentine’s Day for what it really is. You’re disgusted by its sick push for consumerism and waste – the artificially confected chocolates that start to line shelves in late December, one point six billion dollars worth of them to be dutifully purchased when the day finally arrives; the shamelessly promotional, brand-flashing Valentines that all parents must buy for their grabby children; and worse, the sickening cards, 1400 from hallmark alone, that grown-ups are expected to buy one another, plastered with morbid red blobs that look more like gunshot wounds than hearts. You hate it all, every second, every penny of the 18.6 billion dollars that Americans will spend on this day alone.
And I get it. To the cynical eye, Valentine’s Day is the apex of overindulgence. It is commercialization at its worst, a perverted monetization of people’s weaknesses. I see your point; I just disagree with it.
I’m not going to falsely accuse you V-Day naysayers of being jaded or single, because many of you are probably happily coupled, if not to the partner of your dreams, then to the one who will fulfill them temporarily. In fact, my parents, happily married for twenty-five years, are Valentine’s Day haters themselves; it’s a day of “too many calories, ugly gifts, and far too much tomfoolery” as my mother will say, with an eyebrow raise, when questioned.
But even if you are, like me, pathologically single (don’t worry, mother, the only tomfoolery I engaged in this past holiday involved a jar of nutella and a spoon), Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be a twenty-four hour span of increased misery. You don’t have to cry when none of your roommates will join you for dinner that night and you’re stuck alone in a totally empty dhall (so maybe the dhall staff laughed at me when I singlehandedly finished my third plate of fries, whatever). You won’t have to delete your instagram account after seeing six-hundred pictures in a row all geotagged North End with Bae (die). And you shouldn’t even be ashamed on your lonesome trek back from CVS, weaving through crowds of tourists and couples, clutching a bag of half-priced Reese’s hearts tightly to your empty chest. And yes, I can guarantee all of this, because I do indeed know it from experience. I went to bed Valentine’s night spooning my pile of dirty laundry because I was too lazy to kick it off the bed. And I did this with a smile. A big one, well-cultivated by the greatest day of the year. Why?
Because I believe in love, simple as that. I might not have yet felt that omg-movie-style mega super true love, which I suppose to be the best, but I have felt types just as powerful. I have felt the love that is passion or dedication, for my sport or my work or something else I care about. I have felt the love that is when I’m driving around in my car and singing Lady Gaga and all of a sudden I get that feeling that something is just right in the universe. And the love that is that full, belly warmth for my mother and father and brother and a piece of Pinocchio’s at 2 a.m.
All of that love is everything wonderful — a tingle and a tickle and a cuddle and a kiss, all at once, all the time. Thinking about love and the things I love makes me feel like I am tied to a bunch of colorful balloons and floating up and up and seeing all of the world through a haze of happiness below me.
And for me, Valentine’s Day is a day about that love. It’s a day where I can float way up in the atmosphere, staring down at everyone while my balloons dance in the wind. I can’t help but like the idea of a day dedicated entirely to love and its recognition. Is it so much to appreciate and celebrate one day a year, one single day, in love’s honor?
You could, if you wanted to be a pain, say that Valentine’s Day is crap, because we should all love every day. But if you look at it like that, then Mother’s Day is crap too, because we should all be respecting and appreciating our mothers every day anyways. And Groundhog Day is bullshit, because on every other day of the year, I don’t even know what a groundhog is. So drop that line of thought, because it’s faulty.
And jump on my line of thought instead, because it is incomprehensible to me that someone could disagree with a day solely about love.
Valentine’s Day is the only day where you get an excuse to tell all of the people in your life how much you love them, from your roommate to the city bus driver. And it’s generally not considered creepy. It is a day to spread love like organic peanut butter in the dining hall. It is a fully mandated excuse to color hearts instead of doing some obscurity for CS51 (which, like love, isn’t exactly tangible but is undoubtedly there; ergo, if you believe in computers you believe in love). Love is, in its every form, a blessing that goes unnoticed on every other day of the year. But thankfully, there’s Valentine’s Day, just here to celebrate it.
So maybe I didn’t do anything special or romantic on Saturday, or nothing Instagram-worthy at least. But I had a perfect day, filled with a love more tangible than any that can be found on the other three hundred sixty four days of the year. In the end, maybe the one hundred thirty dollars average that each person will spend on V-Day isn’t going to waste. Maybe it’s being well spent. Maybe next year, you should get out there and go buy some valentines. Because undoubtedly, Valentine’s Day is a day about love, and for that, I will always love it.