Column: Valentine’s Day a solid “meh” out of ten
Valentine’s Day probably isn’t the worst major holiday, but there’s no way it escapes the bottom three.
What a dismal time of year to celebrate blossoming love. There are fabulous months in the calendar year for blossoming — February isn’t one of them. February is the accidental continuation of January slapped against a clumsy mud-soaked precursor to March. Nature’s drab color palette here in Cache Valley is about as attractive as the skinned knee you recently suffered in the Smith’s parking lot.
And yet, somehow, the inability to safely set foot on a sidewalk for even a moment isn’t the worst part of the worst month of the year. That distinction belongs to Valentine’s Day, and it’s not for the reason you’re thinking.
Yeah sure mushy couples are annoying, but it’s not like this is the worst time of year to be single — try March when the engagements begin, April when the announcements arrive or June when the wedding finally takes place. Consider the July social media blitz from couples in their honeymoon phase, the sickening “take me back” and subsequent “back to school” photos in August, and the furious freshman dating frenzy of September, and so on. Face it: Valentine’s Day is hardly a blip on the radar of year-round couple-y obnoxiousness. It’s all bad.
What gets me isn’t the couples, it isn’t the flowers and it isn’t the chalky mouth-cancer that is conversational candy hearts (though that argument has legs).
It’s simply that hating Valentine’s Day has never been more “in.”
The Singles Awareness Day crowd has stormed the no-mans-land of neutrality and forced us shoulder-shruggers into a corner. No longer can we voice minor annoyance at the holiday, or even the month as a whole, without it coming off as bitter resentment. I don’t want to have a hard stance on Valentine’s Day — I don’t even particularly want to be writing this column. But here we are, you extra loud Valentine’s haters forced the issue and now I’m typing away on a topic best left ignored.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons not to be psyched about Valentine’s Day, even for those in relationships. It’s a training wheels holiday for prom-bound teens, not an excuse for your grown-ass boyfriend to ignore romance the rest of the year. Giving flowers and chocolates on this day is closer to a relationship tax than a bold declaration of love. Celebrating Valentine’s Day is a tollbooth you must pass through on the way to an argument-free weekend in the most miserable month of this wintry season.
Valentine’s Day is the Lavar Ball of holidays — the more effort devoted to hating it, the more difficult it becomes to simply overlook its pointless existence. Do yourself a favor and ditch the Single Awareness crowd, buy a movie pass and join us adults as we patiently survive ‘til spring.