Now that the whole mess that is Valentine’s Day is behind us, let’s evaluate. We’ve all read the articles and had the discussions: Valentine’s Day is holiday created by Hallmark and other corporations to guilt-trip people into spending money to prove they love someone. Or on the other end you have the ones who argue that it’s a cute holiday and get dressed up in red and pink and cover everything in hearts.
So here are my guidelines to celebrating / not-celebrating the “holiday”.
To Team I-Don’t-Do-Valentine’s-Day
The number one thing I hear is “I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day because (s)he should feel special every day, no use forcing it on one day.” And that’s cool. Hell, it’s impossible to disagree with that. Here’s the thing though. When’s the last time you brought home flowers for her for no reason? When’s the last time you surprised him with tickets to see his favorite team play? When’s the last time both of y’all turned off your phone and spent the weekend locked in your rooms with takeout and old movies? If you don’t do any of the little stuff on random days throughout the year, don’t give me that “I don’t celebrate this corporate holiday because I can show my love and appreciation everyday” bullsh*t, OK?
To Team I-Don’t-Overdo-Valentine’s-Day
Now. I’m not a romantic person. Example: some people feel the need to put their declarations of love for each other all over Facebook. That would make me uncomfortable. Matter of fact, it has made me uncomfortable in the past. So when it comes to Valentine’s Day, all these grand, expensive gestures are are completely lost on me. Let me give you two examples of my best Valentine’s Day celebrations so far.
The first was when I was in a relationship, and we were both broke students. Also, I had an exam coming up so I really just wanted to study. Dude came over with a big bag of groceries and made me all my favorite foods from scratch. Then we watched a movie. Way better than overpaying for a preset menu, in my humble opinion.
Then there was this year’s Valentine’s Day. I’ve never been more single in my life, and lucky for me, so are a lot of my friends. We all got together, ordered the world’s largest pizza, played Cards Against Humanity and practiced some new kizomba moves. It was amazing.
And one of my favorite people out of the group had a moment. He turned to me and said there’s really no need for a romantic relationship. We’re a very tight-knit group. We share everything that happens in our lives, ups, downs etc. A girlfriend would really only add the physical aspect of it all and that can also be achieved with hookups (if that’s your thing). So yeah. I’m kinda feeling this movement to reclaim Valentine’s Day for all important relationships in your life. Minus the overpriced flowers and dinners.