@Randem

Yeah… you read that right. Sure, there are some people who think Christmas is the evil, capitalist holiday, but those people haven’t really considered Valentine’s day.

Let’s compare: At Christmas, everyone gets to participate, even if they’re not married or romantically involved, whereas on Valentine’s day, only lovers get gifts. At Christmas, you get many gifts from many people and the good givers make up for the bad ones, whereas on Valentine’s day you get one gift from one person (if any at all) and if your lover is a lousy gift giver you’re stuck with it. At Christmas, the amount of thought that goes into a gift has meaning, whereas on Valentine’s Day it’s all about extravagance. It’s okay to return a Christmas gift for something in your size, whereas a Valentine’s Day gift in the wrong size has horrible implications. Do I need to go on?

What else? Valentine’s Day is cheesy and fake. Let’s take a moment to think about what actually happens on Valentine’s Day and how insulting it really is.

Flowers
Guys who never buy flowers for their lover will suddenly be rushing out en masse to buy red roses. Why? What about a red rose makes it good on Valentine’s Day? Hey fellas… did you know that most of your women don’t even like roses? Why not take a moment to learn what she actually likes, and give her that on Valentine’s Day? Maybe it’s carnations, maybe it’s irises… a good friend of mine goes ga-ga over gerbera daisies. Don’t give the same cheesy red rose that everyone else is giving.

Greeting Cards
Millions of men and women will flock to Hallmark stores and pay $5.95 for the right to sign their name to someone else’s declaration of love. Millions more will go to Walgreen’s because they’re too lazy to go to Hallmark, and millions more will go to Wal-Mart where the selection is lousy but the cards are cheap. For what? For someone else to do all the work of declaring their love, and writing it down on a card that you can then give away with your name on it. Seriously… if you love someone, you should be able to tell them so on your own, without the card.

Chocolate
This is the only Valentine’s Day gift that actually makes any sense to me. Why? Because chocolate contains phenylethylamine, which is the same chemical released by the brain when someone experiences feelings of love. Therefore chocolate is a very logical gift, because the chocolate can reliably produce the effect that you desire without you having to do any of the work! It’s brilliant! I mean, why go to the trouble of being charming and attractive when you can just feed a chemical to your loved one? Hmmm…. if only Pfizer or GlaxoSmithKline could come up with an over-the-counter phenylethylamine pill…

Dinner
It will be impossible to find an open table at a restaurant this Thursday, because all those same millions of people will have reservations days in advance, so that they can spend even more money trying to prove they love each other. But how does an expensive dinner prove anything? Paying someone else to do all the work is not romantic. You want to prove your love? Cook something yourself. Or, for a really top-notch Valentine’s Day dinner, cook it together. Bump into each other in the kitchen. Get in each other’s way. Have fun. And save the money, too.

Jewelry
This is, by far, the worst of all Valentine’s Day gifts. This is the uber-expensive gift that a man gives to his female lover to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that his love for her is directly proportionate to the size of his credit line. How do I love thee? Let me count the receipts.

Look, people. This day is all wrong. What you should be doing on Valentine’s Day is cooking dinner together, eating it with candles lit, and then snuggling up together on the couch to watch a sappy movie together. That’s it. Stop trying so hard to make it so big, because in doing so, you are taking all the actual meaning out of it and turning it into a show of extravagance.

Cards, flowers, and jewelry are all nice gifts, but all of them mean more when given on some other day. Why not give her a card because it’s the first Tuesday of the month? How about a diamond necklace as a Happy May 30th present? These gifts should NEVER be given on any holiday — and especially not on the Devil’s Holiday.