Valentine’s Day, no matter how you recognize it is constantly in your face during its season.
Essentially, Valentine’s Day is a holiday of extremes, and it makes it almost impossible to let the day pass by quietly and unimposingly. From my experience, Valentine’s Day is approached with extreme joy/love, extreme hatred/sadness, or extreme apathy (yes it exists). No matter where you go on Valentine’s someone feels the need to make his or her feelings on the holiday known to the world.
Extreme love and joy are pretty easy to identify and explain. These are the people who are usually in a relationship on Valentine’s Day and want the world to know how happy they are. You will find the Internet littered with pictures of the numerous gifts their intended gave them, the gifts they bestowed upon their intended, posts gushing about being in love, and photos of the locale, décor, and any food served at their ensuing Valentine’s Day activities. You want to be happy for them, you really do, but their many posts also make you angrily long for the day when Mark Zuckerberg finally invents a “Nobody Cares” button for Facebook.
Then there are those who hate Valentine’s Day with a passion. Their identifying traits include, but are not limited to, paragraph long Facebook rants about how stupid Valentine’s Day is, pictures on various social media outlets of broken hearts and crying puppies, and frequent use of the hashtag #foreveralone, as was pointed out by youtuber Kingsley in his “Why I Hate Valentine’s Day” video . Innocent bystanders are constantly subjected to endless amounts of complaining from these people about how they have no one to spend time with, no one to kiss and no one to send them flowers (the thought alone should be migraine-inducing).
Finally, there are those who are passionately apathetic and make a big show about not caring that it is Valentine’s Day. They usually will also engage in the posting of long winded rants about how dumb V-Day is and will repeatedly tell anyone who will listen how they don’t give a flying you-know-what about cupid, or “this stupid holiday.”
Now, it goes without saying that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. And far be it from me to infringe upon the right of any person to feel however they like about Valentine’s day; but I speak on behalf of all of the many people who are tired of all of the absolute tom-foolery that goes on this time of year when I say, can you tone it down, just a little, please?
If you have someone on Valentine’s Day and you want to tell people about it, then fine. But don’t rub it in. You are not the first person to have someone on Valentine’s Day, and by no means will you be the last. Post one status, two tops about how great your bf or gf is and leave it at that. Enjoy your dates and your presents and let everyone else be on their merry way without being bogged down by your happiness.
Those of you who hate Valentine’s Day, whatever your reasoning may be, please, try not to ruin it for everyone else. There are still ways to enjoy the day even if you don’t have someone. Treat yourself to a pedicure, nice dinner, and a shopping trip. Or, you can gather a group of single friends (I’m sure if you look long and hard you’ll find that you have plenty) and go see a movie, and if you really don’t want to be without a Valentine, then do something about it. Recruit one of your taken girlfriends and see if her man has any single guy friends he’d be interested in hooking you up with. The possibilities are endless!
But no matter what your feelings are, try to remember that Valentine’s Day is and can be for everyone and that no one should feel left out or guilty because of how the people around them choose to address the holiday. A simple hug to a friend or loved one or a good deed can be just as satisfying as going out on a hot date. So spread the love!