I Hate Valentine's Day

I said it right there in the title. I hate the day that's all about love.

Well, actually, it's not about love. It's about romance. Contrived romance. And I hate it. It's all hearts and roses and cards and candlelight and it's a big fat phony. Or it seems that way to me, anyway.

Oh, I have someone to romance. I have a dear husband whom I love very much. And he loves me. He will do something special on Valentine's Day to participate in this holiday to show that he loves me because that's what's expected. I will receive it with gratitude because he is a wonderful husband and I will appreciate the considerate gesture.

But I still hate Valentine's Day.

I resent any effort by society to force the people in my life to demonstrate their affections toward me. And I especially resent any tradition that we encourage that makes anyone in our society feel inferior or insecure just because they aren't currently in a romantic relationship. There's no good reason to focus on that when people might already be going through a great deal of pain over that very thing.

Instead, how about if we have Love and Friendship Day? We could all just send cards celebrating the people in our lives whom we love: best friends; our parents or grandparents; our kids; neighbors; helpful co-workers; our siblings; classmates; pastors and leaders at church; people we know through volunteer or church work; and, of course, our spouse or partner who means the world to us.

What if, instead of having Love and Friendship Day once a year, we have it every month, like on the 1st or on the 15th? See, I could really get into something like that.

Or, how about if we just did it every day? What if we sent cards to the people we think are really wonderful all the time? Wouldn't it be great if we bought each other little reminders of how much we adore them every time we thought about how much we adore them?


I'm sure St. Valentine was a really terrific person. Actually, we don't know anything about him except when he lived and that he was martyred. Not very romantic. So I would like to just skip his day. Let's just get on with loving each other a lot.

Every day.