To be perfectly honest, Valentine’s Day just doesn’t do it for me. I love chocolate and, sure, roses are nice, and red is a pretty color that stands out, and saying I love you to the people you care about is a wonderful thing. But do we need a commercialized, sugarcoated and borderline meaningless holiday to promote all that, or is Valentine’s Day more of an annual marketing campaign designed to sell heart-shaped everything, fill restaurants and (attempt to) make single women feel like they are missing out on some mind-blowing festivities?
Now don’t get me wrong: love makes the world go around. But there are too many things about Valentine’s Day that make me skeptical and, well, sometimes angry. I am a firm believer in the philosophy that when you love someone every day is Valentine’s Day. Expressing affection shouldn’t happen in full force on a designated date only, it should come naturally in every situation. Sex is not suddenly better on Valentine’s Day.
What does happen, however, is that different people in different situations suddenly feel like something is off with the world. Couples feel pressured to do certain things and be a certain way, and Valentine’s Day comes close to becoming a nuisance that has to be stuck through because trying to avoid it would be socially unacceptable.
Even if people in long-term relationships have worked out a way to deal with February 14th, it could still be very confusing for new lovers. If you have recently started seeing someone or have spent just a few nights together, do you go on a date on Valentine’s Day? Do you pretend you’ve lost your calendar and think it’s still January? Do you laugh it off and watch a show?
The worst part is that as a result of Valentine’s Day marketing, singles are conditioned to think that they absolutely need to have a date for the night of the 14th, which could lead to some desperate behavior during the weeks prior to the holiday. (Hopefully, Pomona is more or less immune to such sentiments!) The Internet is cashing on this artificially bred madness and insecurity. Just google “how to get a date for Valentine’s Day,” and you’ll get a pretty comprehensive list of tips like, Hint that you think Valentine’s Day dates are so fun. Hint that you bought a cute new Valentine’s Day outfit, but you don’t have anywhere to wear it. You will also be instructed to smile and look friendly, have cute hair, wear cute clothes and take care of your skin. It’s good to smile and look friendly at least once a year.
Valentine’s Day is just another way to structure love and tell people how it should look like, feel like, taste like. How it should happen. Don’t give me any of that.
In Bulgaria, Valentine’s Day coincides with another holiday, Trifon Zarezan, which pretty much translates to “the day of wine, winemakers, winegrowers, wine vendors, wine drinkers and all drunks.” Besides being the day of love, February 14th has immense cultural significance and is associated with elaborate rituals including cutting the vine trees and drinking copious amounts of wine to celebrate nature and express hopes for another year of abundant life.
I think I’d rather be celebrating Trifon Zarezan with my loved ones today, because my love for them is by no means different just because someone somewhere is buying pink and red heart-shaped candy in a predominantly pink and red candy store.
The Claremont Colleges had a good approach to Valentine’s Day this year. It became V-Day, a day to celebrate women and end violence. Here’s a en excerpt from the Vagina Pride Parade online invitation:
The ‘V’ in V-Day stands for Victory, Valentine and Vagina.
V-Day is a day. We proclaim Valentine’s Day as V-Day, to celebrate women and end the violence.
V-Day is a spirit: We believe women should spend their lives creating and thriving rather than surviving or recovering from terrible atrocities.
V-Day is a fierce, wild, unstoppable movement and community.