Valentine's Day more like Valentine's... uh lame? I guess

Why do we still celebrate Valentine’s Day, like what’s the point? I can’t remember the last person I spoke to who said, “yeah I love Valentine’s day, it’s my favorite holiday”. People in relationships don’t like it because it just means more presents to buy and money to spend. Single people don’t like it because it is just a reminder that they are still looking for the one. I think the only group of people who truly enjoy Valentine’s Day is elementary aged children who just know their going to get free candy. For them it’s basically just Halloween but without all that annoying walking. Valentine’s day was started in Ancient Rome, truthfully what wasn’t, but the Romans celebrated in a slightly cooler way than us. The Romans Valentine’s Day was called Lupernicus and it was a celebration of the start of spring, new life, and most importantly new love. The Roman Valentine’s day was a celebration of the people that were still searching and wasn’t about shaming their singleness. The Romans would get together and throw a massive party with dancing, eating, and drinking. Single men would then pick a woman’s name out of a hat and they would be “dating” for the festival. Nothing sinister it was just like a blind date and if it worked out they could pursue it further, often these match-ups actually led to marriage. The Catholic Church was then like, “Wow, this looks like fun, let’s get religion involved”. So the church renamed the celebration Valentine’s Day after Saint Valentine. Saint Valentine was famous because there was a crazy Roman emperor who made marriage illegal because he thought that it weakened soldiers, and Saint Valentine was like, “nah” and married people in secret. As the church became more in control of the celebration it became less a celebration of finding love, which could possibly lead to awful things such as premarital sex, to a celebration of the love between a man and wife. This was fine for thousands of years until one company, one evil company was founded: Hallmark. Hallmark realized that it could really profit off another day in the year where you were required to buy cards. So they banded together with the chocolate companies and the flower companies, and modern day Valentine’s day was born. Now I have to go through the half a month long anxiety trying to figure out what I’m going to get my girlfriend for a holiday that brings me no joy at all. Here’s the thing, I don’t think we should need a reason or a day to show our significant others that we love them. We should buy them flowers and chocolate when we feel especially appreciative of the love we share for them, not when a company tells us it’s time to buy them chocolate and flowers. Comedic as it is, my favorite day of the year is actually February 15th, you can get all the Valentine’s Day candy for like 80% off. So my plan for this Valentine’s Day is to go to CVS with my girlfriend on February 15th, buy way too much candy, and then simultaneously eat all the candy and watch funny movies. I recommend you consider this system as well.

Sincerely,

-Cam