Valentine’s Day
Valentines Day feels silly to me. It’s one day, out of three hundred and sixty-five, that’s nationally recognized as a time to declare your love to someone or show them that you care. What I don’t understand is why we need a day specifically for that purpose when there are so many other days in the year to act like you care? I say the latter with sarcasm, you should care.
It started out as a day to honor several Saint Valentines, who had been martyrs for their beliefs and was labeled romantic during the renaissance when poetry was written describing the lovers as valentines. Later, a “Court of Love” was created on the day, which specialized in matters of marriage. A book was published entitled, The Young Man’s Valentine Writer, for boys who didn’t know how to write poetry and the day has been wracking nerves ever since. Pharmaceutical companies, movie-makers, and jewelry departments (and that’s just off the top of my head) capitalize on it and not only try to push it in the face of the everyday consumer, but force people into doing something spectacular and meaningful on the day or else. If you don’t do something spectacular or meaningful, you obviously don’t love someone and if you aren’t on the receiving end of something spectacular and meaningful, you obviously aren’t loved and you feel like crap either way, right? But, you don’t feel like crap because you aren’t loved and you don’t feel like crap because someone doesn’t love you. You feel like crap because of your expectations. Most people’s Valentine’s Days don’t live up to expectations; they don’t live up to what John Doe down the street did with his wife. Or they don’t live up to what your parents did every year, or they don’t live up to what you’ve always dreamed they would be. Regardless, you don’t feel like crap because you should. You feel like crap because you’re told to. These expectations are not real and neither is the day. It’s merely a tradition passed down and added onto over the years – a game of telephone, if you will. It started out as something, a few centuries went by and it became something else. So, next time you’re spending this superficial day feeling bad about your circumstances, don’t. Love somebody all year long, even if it’s yourself. Especially, yourself! You don’t need a day and you shouldn’t have to have one. I heard Max Greenfield say in a video for Entertainment Weekly, that romance is consistency and I agree. If you need a day to know whether or not you’re cared for, you have bigger problems than this goofy goober holiday.
