The month of February contains one of my favorite holidays: a day where I finally feel important to someone and celebrate with love, cards, and gifts. Unfortunately, six days before my birthday precedes one of the most malignant and meaningless holidays of all time—Valentine’s Day. Whenever I tell people I don’t celebrate Valentine’s day, the most common response I hear is, “Oh, you must be single.” to which I reply “Stay out of my personal life.” Granted no one has ever accused me of being overly romantic, but my ability to retain a relative control over my emotions allows me to look objectively at this holiday, helping substantiate my arguments rather than invalidate them. The question is, why can’t people see the truth about Valentine’s Day? In the original novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Baum chronicles Dorothy’s odyssey through the land of Oz to find the Emerald City, home of the great Wizard. Unlike in the film and musical adaptation, the famed Emerald City is not completely emerald. The outside walls of marble were decorated with the sparkling green jewels, but the buildings inside the city were bedecked with all sorts of precious stones. In order to hide this fraudulence, the Great Wizard of Oz declared that all admitted into the city must wear green-tinted eyeglasses so as to maintain the illusion of the Emerald City. The Emerald City was not made of emerald, nor even green, but because everyone wore glasses that distorted their vision, they believed wholeheartedly that everything was genuine. Come Valentine’s Day, the population dons red-tinted glasses called “love,” hiding the farces and lies of the holiday with artificial affection. In the next few minutes, I hope to help you heave these wholly hypothetical lorgnettes off so you too can evaluate this so called “day of love” through healthy and unhampered eyes.
Happy Valentine’s Day, the hallowed time we celebrate the miraculous virgin birth of St. Valentine, the patron saint of consumerism. Actually, there are approximately a dozen different St. Valentines recognized by the Catholic church. There is no definitive origin for Valentine’s Day; there are more myths and legends about how it began than Hillary Clinton has emails on her private server. All these stories consist of similar yet slightly different features. Even among modern scholarly articles there is debate and inconsistency as to which origin is the most widely accepted, though most believe St. Valentine’s Day was actually based off a combination of the lives of two different St. Valentines. One of such stories consists of the blessed St. Valentine who helped protect Christians and marry lovers in secret after Emperor Claudius II banned both Christianity and matrimony. It is said that in jail, St. Valentine fell in love with the jailer's daughter, and on the day of his execution, the incarcerated priest sent her a love letter signed “from your Valentine.” St. Valentine was apparently executed on February 14th, making him one of the most romantic martyrs of the Catholic church. Of course, there is no certainty as to how much is historically accurate. Some say that the great English poet Chaucer invented Valentine’s Day in a poem where he connected the meeting of lovers to the belief that birds found their mates on February 14th. No matter what truly was the inspiration of Valentine’s Day, it wasn’t until 498 A.D. that the celebrations of love became official when Pope Gelasius declared the holiday.
There are many traditions that have evolved into the Valentine’s Day that we now know. The exchanging of little love tokens and notes with poetry has always been around, but the cards were originally handmade and heartfelt. It was yet another superstition of the day that signing one’s name on a love letter was considered bad luck, thus we received the pseudonym “your secret admirer.” Another tradition in England and France was for a group of young men and women to draw billets on Valentine’s, matching a man and woman together for the forthcoming celebrations. We might call this an ancient form of blind dating, but I feel a speed dating or eHarmony joke would be just as appropriate in this situation. In more modern times, awkward Valentine dances became popular among middle schools, and handmade cards became a thing of the past. In the ever progressive present, you can buy Valentine gifts of any shape or value, ranging from 3D plastic cards to five-foot teddy bears.
The fact that we have no idea why we really celebrate Valentine’s day should be a warning signal. Of course there are plenty of obscure holiday myths and traditions, and not everyone may know the exact history and timeline of every holiday, but with enough research a definitive origin can be come to, except for on Valentine’s Day. The beginnings of this horrible day are lost in the murky fog of ancient history. Not only are the origins and customs of Valentine’s Day ambiguous to say the least, the fact that the history of the holiday doesn’t matter to those who celebrate it should garner concern, if not your earnestly requested attention.
I personally have an opinion as to how Valentine’s day was created. Imagine some board of executives of some large company meeting in some glass-walled conference room. All are seated at the heavy mahogany table in suit and tie as the ceo stands in front of them with a powerpoint projecting data onto the wall.
“Listen everyone,” said the ceo. “We need a new holiday. We have a huge stall in sales after the highs we get in November and December. We need something to jumpstart the markets back into action. So, give me your best sale pitches for this new holiday. What should we celebrate?”
“Money!” blurted the over-eager and slightly-less-than-intelligent intern.
“A little forward, but I like where your head’s at.” replied the ceo.
There was a silent pause for arduous thought.
“Life?” offered Joe.
“No.”
“Death?” Derek suggested.
“No.”
“Love.” said Tod slowly, drawing out the one syllable word. The room instantly became silent as every head turned to look at him. The ceo snapped his fingers and pointed at Tod in excitement.
“Perfect! Now we’re talking. How can we celebrate love?”
“Hearts.” said Tod, once again taking ample time to enunciate a single syllable.
“Chocolates!” said Craig through a mouthful of M&M’s.
“You know what this drab room needs? Flowers. Yeah, a nice vase with some flowers right in the center of the table.” the vice president mused absent mindedly.
“Gentlemen,” said the ceo leaning on the conference table with his hands spread in a Hollywood power pose. “We have ourselves a holiday.”
The sad truth is, this very well may have been how Valentine’s day was started. The depth of meaning behind the holiday would suggest such an arbitrary creation. Holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving have specific subjects of celebration: At Christmas, you celebrate the birth of baby Jesus; at Thanksgiving, you celebrate the pilgrims’ journey and rocky relationship with the Native Americans. On Valentine’s day, you celebrate… love: as generic and ambiguous a cause as celebrating the sky or our ability to smell. Not only is Valentine’s Day pointless, it is the most overly clichéd holiday known to man. Even the strongest advocates of Valentine’s Day romance will admit the extreme amount of platitude. All the cheesy cards and tacky decorations give the holiday an unsettlingly childish feel. I’m all for cheesy and silly celebrations, but it feels out of place when supposedly celebrating something as serious and special as love. The definition of a cliché according to Dictionary.com is a trite, stereotyped expression; a sentence or phrase, usually expressing a popular or common thought or idea, that has lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long overuse. Valentine’s Day has become one huge cliché and, just as in writing, should be avoided like the plague. V-day has been done to death with the overuse of stupid “love tokens;” at least at Christmas there is variance among the presents presented. When it comes to Valentine’s Day, all the common gifts can be placed into three categories: cards, candies, and carnations (stuffed animals are of such minimal significance there is no point categorizing them). Of course with everything there are exceptions. There are plenty of people who give original gifts, but the triteness of the red flowers and heart-shaped boxes has destroyed what little dignity Valentine’s Day possesed.
While evaluating the festivities and presents, let us keep in mind what we are supposedly celebrating, romance; and then let me ask you, what is romantic about any of those things? I love you, now here, have some diabetes. I saw this naked baby carrying a firearm and thought of you. This stuffed bear represents our relationship: utterly pointless, but looks cute for when friends and family come over. Here are some flowers so you can watch them shrivel up and die, no matter how hard you try to make them last. I may be taking on a facetious tone, but let’s truly analyze why these things aren’t inherently romantic. The first step is to ask the question, what makes something romantic? This is like the question “What is time?” It’s easy to understand but hard to explain. The technical definition of romantic is something conducive to or characterized by the expression of love. This isn’t a satisfactory definition for me, so I went to one of the most trusted worldwide sources of information: the AskWomen section on Reddit. Misunderstood_Maiden says something romantic is done “with the purpose to have them feel they are special….” This hits the nail right on the proverbial head; The key to romance is making that special person sitting across from you feel special. Romantic gifts should be something unique, not generic. It should be something with meaning behind it, something that can only be for one sole person, something requiring a great amount of thought and or effort, something of value. And yet, when every other person you pass holds a rose in one hand and the same Hallmark card in the other, special is not the feeling you get. The sheer commonality and thoughtless nature of the presents we so commonly see on February 14th lends itself by definition to being anything but romantic. So why is it everyone sees romance where there is none? It is because around the middle of February, everyone puts on rose-colored spectacles that change how they view the world.
Might I ask you, who benefits from us wearing these glasses? In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, it was the Wizard who exploited and hoodwinked the people of Oz to gain power and control. Who could possibly benefit from everyone in the world spending needless amounts of money on the same day? As already alluded to several times in this essay, Valentine’s Day is a corporate holiday whose sole purpose is to make us spend money. Almost every country in the world rates Valentine’s Day as one of their top shopping days of the year. It is true that every holiday has been commercialized to a point, but none like Valentine’s Day. In 2014, the National Retail Federation (NRF not to be confused with the NRA) predicted total spending for the holiday to be $17.3 billion. The NRF stated the average person would spend around $132. If Valentine’s Day has any benefit at all, it would be the important annual uptick for the retail industry it provides. The largest counter argument would be that Christmas is worse. First of all, to compare one evil to one worse is no justifiable argument. Secondly, I disagree with you. Statistically, Christmas is the highest spending holiday, mainly due to the contributions of Black Friday and the fact that presents are bought for a multitude of people instead of one special someone, but several aspects make Valentine’s Day the more horrendous offender. First of which is the reason we celebrate each holiday. To reiterate at the risk of redundancy, Christmas has a specific origin, a specific event we celebrate, something Valentine’s Day lacks. There are people of course who don’t celebrate Christmas for its intended reason, but there are people who do, and it’s those people who are least likely to be sucked into the corporate vacuum. The two holidays are very similar in their evils, but Christmas can always point to a specific reason for celebration. Valentine’s can’t, as if the sole reason for its existence is to make us spend money. Also, on Valentine’s Day, the markets manipulate one of our weakest and most vulnerable emotions—love. Christmas may have an aspect of “love capitalization” to it, but love is Valentine’s Day’s central idea, its whole branding strategy. Valentine’s Day is in its entirety one huge coaxing, taking advantage of our weakest of human characteristics. But we are still left with the question who specifically benefits from V-day’s marketing manipulation?
First and most obvious is the flower business. Overnight on February 13, 1996, Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx alone transported more than 3 million pounds of roses, amounting to $331 million worth of flowers. That’s just FedEx, and just in 1996. 1-800-FLOWERS Inc. says the Valentine period (first two weeks of February) make up 10% of their annual floral sales—10% of the year in two weeks! The candy business does just as well, as can be imagined. The Hershey Company makes more than 8 million pounds of Hershey kisses alone for Valentine’s Day. Fun fact: half of the world’s cocoa supply comes from Ghana and the Ivory Coast where children and adults are forced to work. 800,000 children in Cote d’Ivoire and 100,000 in Ghana labored in the cocoa harvesting work, but only 5-10% worked for pay. Try enjoying that Russell Stover’s Elegant Assortment Box while thinking about those poor Ghanish and Ivory kids who made it for you; you’re welcome.
Card companies are next on our list of beneficiaries. Our world has come a long way from handmade cards filled with affection and care. In America, it wasn’t until 1849 when Esther A. Howland started the New England Valentine Co. that valentines were mass produced and distributed in America. Today, or at least in 2014, 144 million people sent Hallmark cards on Valentine’s Day. Another business that benefits from the “love day” are the restaurants. 34.6% of the total $17.3 billion spent on Valentine’s Day is spent on dining, beating out flowers and coming right before chocolates and cards. Valentine’s Day is the hardest day of the year to schedule reservations. With so many holiday specials and seasonal menus and love-struck customers, it is one of the biggest days of the year for restaurant owners. Another way people celebrate their ability to spend money is by going on romantic weekend getaways. Hotwire.com held a survey whose results stated 42.3 million American adults reported they would prefer planning a weekend trip around Valentine’s Day more than any other “non-major” holiday. Movies and song writers also gain a significant amount of revenue. More and more romantic films have timed their release date for February 14th. Music, which is already strongly associated with love and such emotions, is a major Valentine product, releasing new love songs around the holiday. Legacy Recordings senior VP/GM Adam Block says Valentine’s Day causes what he calls “impulse buying.”
An even more surprising group that makes money on Valentine’s Day is divorce lawyers. This may sound like more of my dry humor, but this is actually what Forbes calls “the Valentine’s Day Effect.” Their theory is that people get sentimental during the holidays, start thinking about romance and analyzing their relationships come February, and then decide they deserve to be happy. Whatever the cause for this boost in business, there is an uptick in the divorce market around the Valentine season. So basically everyone, even divorce attorneys, benefits from St. Valentine’s—except for us.
So far I can deal with Valentine’s day. I can live with the cheesiness of it, and the corporate invasion may be despicable but can be personally avoided. The biggest problem I have with the holiday is its psychological impact on society. Valentine’s Day reaches to all age groups and demographics; whether it’s a plastic cutout with “Happy First Valentine’s Day” on it or a Dollar Tree card saying “I love you from the bottom of my pacemaker,” there are plenty of people targeted on the holiday. But how are people affected? How does it cause us to view love? Valentine’s Day creates a false pretense of love, making it as cheap and shallow as the holiday itself. We already live in a culture where the solution to all our problems is to click a few buttons on a phone or go buy this to replace or fix that, but this is not how human emotions work, let alone love, the most fickle and vulnerable of all emotions. Love itself has been commercialized, mass produced, and distributed in the seasonal aisle of any major supermarket. We have been conditioned into thinking love comes in the form of chocolates and champagne. Valentine’s Day fills us with misguided opinions and false expectations of love.
Not only does it have a general influence on our view of love, it also has very specific effects on people’s emotions around the holiday. Emotions are always volatile and unreliable, and love being the most vulnerable is also the most dangerous to try to manipulate. Obviously, Valentine’s Day creates a lot of unhealthy and needless stress—stress to please one’s partner or fulfill unreasonable expectations. The holiday also sets one up for more serious emotional disturbance. A grand majority of singles (myself excluded of course) feel despondent around this holiday when they see the phony advertisements of happy couples having a romantic time. Breakups are also bad, yet prevalent around this time of year. I’ve heard plenty of stories of people actually being dumped on February 14th, and as we learned a few minutes ago, there have probably been a few divorces on that day as well. Breakups and loneliness usually hurt, but Valentine’s Day acts as an amplifier or a catalyst to the pain already felt.
The businesses have taken our view of love, slapped on these gaudy garnet goggles over our faces, and changed what romance is to us. If you need proof of this, think about romance outside of the holiday. Does it change? It’s probably better, isn’t it. Part of this brings us back to what makes something romantic: it’s the intentions behind our actions. During any other part of the year, romantic displays of affection are genuine and voluntary, whereas on Valentine’s Day it feels compulsory, like something you have to do instead of something you want to do. This defeats, as said before, the purpose of romance. I would argue that, aside from the mere hype of the holiday, Valentine is the worst time to try to do something romantic. Valentine’s Day has altered our opinions and views of love for the worse, creating a generation detached from commitment and devoid of originality, all the things that make love so great.
But keep in mind, holidays are only what you chose to make of them. If you want to set aside February 14th for some genuine affection and quality time with someone else, then by all means. I am simply suggesting that Valentine’s Day is not a conducive environment for healthy and sincere romance, but that is just one lowly pragmatist’s opinion. My greatest concern is that you are not blinded by what the capitalistic culture has labeled “love.” Take a minute to think about such deep, philosophical questions as “What is love?” and “How can I best express my love?” in a purely objective mindset and come to your own conclusions. Don’t let the corporations and businesses pull the wool, or in this case glasses, over your eyes. Even Dorothy eventually left Oz because, like the Emerald City, she realized it was too “perfect” to be real. So before you listen to Cupid and blindly fall in love this February, take a minute to objectively analyze how you truly feel. I will leave you with these few words of wisdom. Give your emotions to few, and your heart to even fewer, but seldom give out your phone number to strangers.
Love,
Your Valentine
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