Don’t let grumpy, cynical people fool you, Valentine’s Day is great. Even if you aren’t spending the day with someone you love, celebrating that love, that deep human connection you’ve made, then you have to acknowledge that it’s a day celebrating love! It’s a positive holiday. There is so much negativity in the world, why not spend a day celebrating love. Go back to being grumpy on Wednesday.
There aren’t a lot of days commemorating positive things, don’t crap on positive things. There are enough reminders all around us that the world is bleak and horrifying, lay off the things that are trying to remind us that life is also capable of deeply positive, profound experiences.
Professing your love for someone is no small thing. It means that you have opened yourself up, become vulnerable to another person and they reciprocated. That’s something definitely needs to be celebrated. Even if you are certain that you celebrate it everyday, there’s always room for a little more. Do you write a note professing your love every day? If so, that’s a little intense, you may want to back off.
I get it, I’m deeply cynical, I look at everything with suspicion with an underlying derision. Valentine’s Day could be seen as a made-up holiday to sell flowers and cards, but so what? So are all holidays. Do you think giraffes celebrate Christmas (which sounds like a Wings album)? We’re humans, we make up things to celebrate all the time. Marriage is made up but it still warrants celebration. Homes are a human invention, but we still live in them.
Single people, it’s okay to celebrate being alone on Valentine’s Day. Glorify the fact that you’re not in a bad relationship. Don’t curse other people’s happiness. Celebrate your own autonomy. Drink wine out of the bottle and binge watch something because you don’t have to wait for a partner to watch something with you and if you watched it on your own it would be seen as a bigger betrayal than sleeping with your partner’s mom. Just eat some pizza, pet your probably autistic cat and let people who are in love be in love.
It’s a positive holiday. Don’t be a grump. Nobody likes a grump. Thus ends my annual War on the War on Valentine’s Day. Let people like what they like.
Strangely Naked 
Sure sure, love and all that crap but also CHOCOLATE.
Already bought Boyfriend his annual sexypants boxers. This year, it’s hearts and handcuffs (because that’s all they had left at the store.)
LikeLike
O wise pickle, I agree with you.
LikeLike
There are people who feel love and deep human connections? I don’t understand.
Love,
Janie
LikeLike
I love Valentines Day! But I hate getting cut roses or any flowers really. I’m one of those let flowers live people.David knows this so he gets me VD plants and chocolate Kisses. GAWD, that sounds awful, VD plants. Anywho, the house is starting to look like a jungle.
LikeLike
Also, you don’t HAVE to celebrate it on the 14th. The wife and I celebrate it on the 15th by buying a shopping basket full of cheap, discount chocolate, and then stuffing ourselves… together. It’s beautiful, really, while also being a bit disgusting.
LikeLike
My husband isn’t interested in Valentines Day, he can’t see the point and usually says I gave him the best Valentines gift 30 years ago and nothing will ever be better, the gift was a daughter Natasha who turns 30 today but would it kill him to give me a nice card I generally give him a nice card
LikeLike
Tim, get off your ass and buy a nice card for your sweet wife.
With menace,
Janie
LikeLike
Married-splaining?
“See, what all you single people really need to do is…”
I’m kidding, I think. the older I get, the less conscientiously cynical I get. People should be happy, and they don’t need a good reason.
LikeLike
Oh, Pickleope VP, you see, while we love thee, we are in yet a world that glamorizes and fatasizes and makes mention of to an infinite extent the idea that one is nothing if not in a long-term romance. We know that it’s bologna. Yet, this is the world in which we live. So I shall continue to celebrate with my annual VDay hate. I love your attempts at the war against love and all. I exchanged sweet “Happy Valentine’s Day, I love you”s with my nephew, and love makes the world go ’round and all that mush. But chocolate comes first.
LikeLike
Respectfully, I disagree. I’d say that being single is romanticized far more than long term relationships. There is vastly more marketed to those jumping from relationship to relationship, because those are the people spending money. People who have been married for 15 years aren’t making grand overtures of love. Those days are gone. That couple is cuddling in the corner, secure in their love. The couple that’s only started dating a week ago are the ones paying for sky writing and balloons and expensive dinners. The insecure are being marketed towards constantly, not the long-term romanced. The long-term relationship is the marketing ploy sent to the woefully single who may have started dating a day-or-two ago in hopes of them spending money on a hot-air balloon ride or couples retreat in order to make that short-term relationship into a long-term relationship. If you fall for the marketing, that’s no the fault of Valentine’s Day. Celebrate love. Don’t spread the hate.
LikeLike
Yes, people in relationships are in relationships, PVP. They’re NOT single. And the most exciting time IS the beginning, and a couple’s first Valentine’s Day better be a good one. But long termers are expected to celebrate year after year. My point is that being single on Valentine’s Day stinks, because Valentine’s Day is for couples at any and every stage. I wish it was a celebration of love generally, but it’s certainly not marketed as one. And being single means not having a date on VDay, which stinks. Even though a VDay date can stink too. But believe me, I celebrate my singledom and fully enjoy the loving hateful playfulness that I get at Life by Chocolate every year – including from you.
LikeLike
I very much disagree with the assertion that “the most exciting time is the beginning” of a relationship. I’ve been with my partner for 15 years and we just had our most exciting year. It’s not the same as the general terror of the pressures of a nascent relationship, but filled with over a decade of nuance and experience and struggle and growth that make the 15th Valentine’s Day the most profound we’ve ever had. Each year in a relationship is new and different and worthy of its own unique celebration.
As I mentioned in my post, being single on Valentine’s Day is a cause for its own celebration. If you’re bowing to the marketing, then you have to bow to the marketing of everything else. Are you waif enough to wear the clothes as they are marketed on living skeletons that call themselves models? The marketing is a moot point. Celebrate not being in a BAD relationship. Holidays are what YOU make them, and Valentine’s Day, I continue to assert, is a positive holiday and as such should be aggrandized. I urge you to eschew cynicism and celebrate positivity.
LikeLike