Ah! Valentine’s Day and all the heart ache that comes in its wake, and this year probably wasn’t any different. I know the day has passed but I had been meaning to write this post but never got around to doing so until now. Young people all over the world might have gotten into beds they shouldn’t have, spent large sums of money buying copious gifts that they had no business buying, but did it anyway because it was the 14th of February, the day of “love”.
Spending Val’s day here in the States however, made me see it in a very different light. February 14th is just another holiday, where aggressive advertising starts from immediately after Christmas up until the actual day, sales are shoved in your face, soapy adverts make you want to go out and buy some outrageous gifts, that leaves a gaping hole in your pocket or sends you further into debt because your credit card has been maxed out and for what?
What is it about this day that makes it the one day of the year where it is legitimate to buy your spouse a gift and failure to do this is seen as not being romantic, it beats me. I personally don’t think that Valentine’s Day is the only day to express your love to your spouse, the remaining 364 days of the year is ample enough for declarations of love. Showing your spouse how much you love and appreciate them should be something you do on a regular basis, and while physical gifts are important, there are other ways to gift your spouses as well. You can give them the gift of your time, attention, forgiveness, intimacy, a decent meal, the remote control even when you have a game to watch, I could go on and on.
However, the bubble that is Valentine’s Day was rudely burst in my head when I found myself at the grocery store on the night of February 15th. The store staff worked tirelessly to take down all the silly cupids and arrows and candy and flowers and replaced them with Easter bunnies and some other stuff. Valentine’s day was over and it was back to business as usual. It struck me as really funny because if you had walked into the store a night before you would have been enveloped in the spirit of the season and would have felt bad if you had nobody to spend the day with.
So watching the store staff burst the balloons and take down the cupids was quite eye opening for me, and it served to reinforce my belief that there are a hundred more days to show love and that you don’t have to go broke while making other peoples businesses richer to buy some gift just because its valentine’s day.
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