Don’t Worry About Valentines Day

For the 26th year in a row, I’m going to be single for Valentines Day. Does that bother me? No. Because it’s just Valentines Day.

For starters, it’s supposed to be a holy day, commemorating two martyred saints, both called Valentine, one of Rome and one of Terni, back in the days where being a Christian was a pretty scary thing if you lived in most places on Earth rather than just a handful of them. While not much is known of Valentine of Terni, Valentine of Rome was killed because he’d been caught marrying people in a Christian fashion, and the story is that he signed a letter with “Your Valentine”, which got changed to “From Your Valentine” in modern English. What interests me more is a story I read in the old Horrible Histories comic series that, when Saint Valentine was executed, the eyes of his executioner hit the ground at the same time as Saint Valentine’s dead did.

Anyway, old Christian stories aside, these days, Saint Valentines Day drops the saintly stuff and is basically a massive social and commercial glowing neon sign for couples. I mean, according to Wikipedia, “In the UK, just under half of the population spend money on their Valentines and around £1.3 billion is spent yearly on cards, flowers, chocolates, and other gifts, with an estimated 25 million cards being sent. ” It’s a fucking massive business so of course everyone is going to want a piece of that sweet, romantic, money-making pie.

The thing is, Valentines Day can get very… mean. Western society kinda expects that a man or woman should buy or do something nice for his partner, otherwise they won’t be considered a good person. If you don’t treat your partner on Valentines Day, then you’re a bad partner. That’s pretty bollocks of course. Sure, it’s one day a year where the theme is being nice to your partner, but, well, is it really the end of the world if you don’t manage to make the day perfect?

I mean, sure, there’s tons of nasty things one might do, for example, dumping their partner unexpectedly or cheating on them or something. But if you don’t get flowers or a blowjob, is it really the end of the world? Of course not.

That being said, it’s nice for things to go both ways. Men shouldn’t be obligated to buy for their partners and neither should women. These days, it’s just a push to make us buy things, when something as simple as a small, home cooked meal would have the same effect on your partner.

As for all the single people? Fuck ’em. If we’re not buying things then we’re worth nothing to anyone. It can be hard having to sit through all the love-y dove-y stuff, but that’s okay, there’s always sales we can make use of. Especially on chocolate. I swear half the chocolate in the stores lately has been on sale simply because Valentines Day = Chocolate Day. But if you don’t have a partner, it doesn’t really matter. If anything, it’s going to be harder to get partner because everyone suddenly has much higher expectations and is trying to force relationships to happen, and frankly everyone’s so caught up that it just turns into a massive mess.

At the end of the day though, it is literally just one day. One in 365 days. There are plenty of other days not just to find a partner or spend time with a partner, but to be nice to each other in general.

I honestly have no idea where I was going with this. So I’ll just say one last thing: Don’t be a cunt.