Valentine

“Happy unimaginative consumerist entirely arbitrary manipulative shallow interpretation of romance day”, says one card, which is part of the so-called anti-Valentine’s Day movement. I doubt very much if the anti-Valentine’s Day movement is actually a thing at all, just a kind of informal collective which wants to deride the whole thing or, more likely, to make money out of it. You know, by selling cards with “Happy unimaginative consumerist entirely arbitrary manipulative shallow interpretation of romance day”.

Someone called, and I am not making this up, Floribeth Pena de Amador, who is founder of the Happy Book Place, an online gift shop says this: “Valentine’s Day is not something that everyone likes to celebrate – it’s very commercialised, everything is about love, love, love. I think people are honestly fed up with the day.” Of course, by selling anti-Valentine’s Day tat, she isn’t part of this terrible ‘commercialised’ world.

It’s worth drilling down through her comments. “Valentine’s Day is not something everyone likes to celebrate.” She’s right there. I don’t give a flying fuck about it. I have 365 days of the year to demonstrate to my partner how much I love her. Narrowing it down to one day, to line the pockets of tat producers and people selling cheap Prosecco, is not my idea of love. But each to their own.

Yes, Valentine’s Day is commercialised. That’s the whole point. In that sense, it’s like Christmas where people celebrate a dead Palestinian who probably didn’t exist in the first place by buying each other tat. Bonfire Night, Halloween, Easter – it’s all commercialised. We can choose the bits we want to participate in.

Is it about love? Maybe for some people it is. Good luck to them. And I doubt that anymore people are fed up with the day than they ever were. Just because I think it’s a load of old tosh doesn’t mean you should.

I think I will avoid the Happy Book Place because it comes across as a miserable book place. But I’ll avoid Valentine’s Day, too.