I was going to title this “Why I Hate Valentine’s Day,” but since I recently used that same title to describe football on Super Bowl Sunday, I figured I should probably avoid sounding redundant and pissy.
Except that Valentine’s Day makes me pissy.
I hate this trumped-up, b.s., hearts-and-flowers, commercial rip-off of a holiday. A lot. I feel the same way about Christmas, but that’s at least partially due to being an atheist and objecting to such a blatantly egregious violation of the separation of church and state (to say nothing of other people expecting me to get all worked up about their religion without doing me the courtesy of keeping their religion out of my face).
Valentine’s Day is worse, though. Religious under-pinnings though it may have, they are very remote. This is a Holiday Made by Hallmark. And that just galls me.
It galls me that Americans are so consumer-obsessed that they have fed a system that has said that, at no time of the year, should we walk into a store of any kind and not be greeted with a holiday display.
It galls me that people don’t stop and look at the fact that part of our current economic crisis is rooted in the very same attitude that has turned holidays from personal “celebrations” into big business that entire industries are now dependent on to survive — and that, in a dose of fiscal responsibility and reality, now that we don’t have the money to continue to sustain it, our history of recklessness now damages businesses that support entire communities worth of people.
It galls me that people don’t talk about this: our obsession with irresponsible consumerism, with ‘keeping up with the Jones’ is what led to the bubble and the fact that it was not sustainable is what led to the burst.
People taking out mortgages they couldn’t afford is a symptom of the problem, not the underlying issue. And, lest you think I am letting the financial industry off the hook (HA!), the fact that financial industry professionals are often paid on such a bonus-heavy basis only fosters that: “What do I care if the bank has to foreclose on this person’s house in two years? My check will be long-since cashed by then!”
Our entire economic condition is the natural by-product of an attitude. An attitude that said that ridiculous consumer spending was ok, simply because times were good. Who needs to save? Times are good! Sure, let’s borrow insane amounts of money on an SUV that only gets 8 miles per gallon! Why not? Times are good! I’m not worried about having a mortgage on which I only pay interest for two years and then have a massive balloon payment: I’ll just refinance before it’s due. I’m not worried. Times are good!
Argh!
When I was a kid Valentine’s Day, Easter and Halloween were all secondary holidays. They were days that you had cupcakes at school and did special art projects; maybe even had a fun carnival or parade. It was a celebration first and foremost. It was not exploitative business that emphasized the need for consumeristic one-upmanship.
A good friend/former co-worker and his wife were having dinner with my husband and I one night. We were talking about Valentine’s Day, and I was commenting that my very sweet husband had bought one of those insanely over-the-top flower packages for me that brought me a new bouquet every day of the week last year. By the end of the week, my desk at the office looked like Wild Kingdom. Every woman in the office was jealous and every man in the office wanted to kill him for making them feel like shmucks.
Unfortunately, I was in a bind: while I appreciated his sentiment and thought it was a very sweet gesture, I was furious that he would spend money on flowers. Flowers are such a racket and it pisses me off that they charge so much. I would rather have a $5 bouquet from the produce market that last 3 days than to have a $70 bouquet from a florist that last two weeks. I really detest what they charge for something that, frankly, I don’t particularly care about all that much.
During this discussion my friend’s wife (after being horrified at my lack of romantic spirit) commented that her husband got her the special Valentine’s Day Vera Wang bouquet, and she loved it. I looked at my husband and said, “If you EVER bought me that, I would have to kill you. You know that, right?” He laughed, patted me on the knee and said he completely understood that.
But the fact is, he only sort of gets it. My husband — like so many other poor beleaguered men out there — was raised getting all kinds of crap from the women in their lives about all the things they are “supposed” to do for Valentine’s Day. This problem is two-fold: for starters, he cannot truly get his head around the idea that this “holiday” just makes me cranky and I would be much happier if he helped me ignore it entirely. But secondarily, the fact is that he’s been brainwashed into believing that what our consumer-obsessed culture thinks is important on Valentine’s Day is or should be important to me. So he defaults to cards, chocolate, flowers, gifts, etc.
And the fact is, I can’t stand those gifts. If he wants to do something to truly makes me happy, then he could wash the car, or take out the garbag, or give the dog a bath, or clean the bathtub. Unsexy though those may be, THAT would be meaningful. Flowers that we can’t afford that are only doing to die and drop leaves all over the place that I have to clean up after, before having to take up an entire garbage bag to throw them away do NOT make me happy.
For him to find himself married to a woman who doesn’t have a single romantic bone in her body (think Miranda Hobbes, pre-kid) is something that he finds profoundly confusing.
As we are getting our new business off the ground, one of his biggest regrets is that we don’t have the disposable income at the moment for him to go nuts this time of year like usual (and, to compound his frustration, we have a holiday-packed Feb-March: his birthday, Valentine’s Day, our anniversary and then my birthday, all within 30 days). To me, the single BEST thing about watching our money so closely this year is that we don’t have to do the Valentine’s Day hearts-and-flowers crap that just annoys the daylights out of me.
Sure, I can list off a million reasons I hate Valentine’s Day: sappy crap, forced cotton candy-like relationship goopiness, ridiculous expectations, too many f#$&ing teddy bears, over-priced flowers and so much lovey-dovey bullshit that I want to take up kick boxing just to get out my frustration. But that’s all just because I’m an anti-romance cynic with no stomach for the mushy stuff. That’s the emotional, knee-jerk, break-out-in-hives reaction that is purely personal.
My bigger objection is what Valentine’s Day says about us as a people. And, frankly, most of it isn’t good.
However, note to hubby: If you want to do something truly romantic and meaningful that I will be guaranteed to appreciate for Valentine’s Day, there is a sink full of dishes that need to be washed. Doing those would be an absolutely magnificent gift.
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