Valentines, the commercialists dream

Valentines Day is a day in mid-February that deals with love. Starting there, it is almost straightforward how it can go wrong. Love is something that cannot be defined, because it is different for every individual, and even further it changes for each person during their life multiple times. So having a holiday based on celebrating something that is not even clearly defined.. yeah, it just is not happening that well.

There are just too many types of love out there. From young love, to passionate love, to even love for a certain item (not a human), love exists in many forms that often can not be categorized with each other. This makes trying to make a holiday about it rather ridiculous, and Valentines Day can be categorized as such, a ridiculous and definitely unneeded holiday.

To celebrate love, to cherish the significant other, to celebrate the connection between two individuals, it seems something that influential in someones life would be too much to celebrate in just one day. It would seem that an entire year should be spent on it, after all they are a significant other. If something is so significant, then narrowing it down to just one day of celebration would be containing it.

Perhaps there is one aspect of love that can often fit into the Valentines Day version, and that is probably through the young teenagers first experiencing what love is. It is the motivational kick to get them to the one they have a crush on, to make them realize love is something worth chasing, and worth experiencing. Now that I am in college I can see this clearer than before, because on Valentines Day the halls and classrooms in my high school were crowded with balloons, stuffed animals, pink and red posters announcing the Valentines Day Dance, or perhaps even Valentine grams hosted by the school. But in college, there was absolutely none of that too be around. It goes to show that Valentines does outgrow humans, and becomes rather pointless.

Of course when mentioning the fault of Valentines Day it is almost required to talk about the commercialism of it all. Store aisles turn blindingly pink during the first two weeks of February, amassing to a huge number of candy bags and other holiday treats to be sold. Perhaps this is why older generations celebrate Valentines the way they do, because all of the riff-raff stuff available is only available during those two weeks, and giving them to the significant other is a matter of conformity with the rest of the country.The commercialism sparks a mass conformity issue, and it is more likely than not that most individuals caught up in it do not want to be caught up, but they feel forced to, to keep up appearances or because (even worse) the significant other expects it.

Overall though, you will not catch me celebrating Valentines Day any different than any normal day, because whenever I do find my significant other I will celebrate that every day, not only one day and lose sight of it for the rest of the year.

They say that love knows no bounds, but it is clear that it actually does, and it is called Valentines Day.