Unpopular opinion
Valentine’s Day Blues: 4 reasons why the day of love annoys me
© Jan Faukner / Shutterstock
For some people, Valentine’s Day is one of the most beautiful days of the year – for others, not. For our author, the hype surrounding February 14th gets more and more on her nerves every year. Here she discusses what bothers her most on the day of love.
Overall, I really like February. The weather is not my thing at all, but I love that the darkness is now noticeably receding. When you wake up in the morning, the sky is usually gray instead of black. That’s something. Likewise, I don’t have to turn on the lights in my apartment until a few minutes after work. Wow. No joke, that puts me in a really good mood. I also like these weeks in which the most beautiful time of the year for me – spring, summer and autumn – lies ahead of me, unused, but still very close. And I appreciate that February has the decency to say goodbye after a maximum of 29 days and doesn’t drag on as brazenly and endlessly as my personal horror months of January and December. So February has a special place in my heart. There’s only one thing that annoys me about this month: Valentine’s Day.
Basically, I have nothing against this day itself. I am always for celebrating beautiful things, in this case love, and I also find the story or legend on which Valentine’s Day is based interesting and worth telling. A man who goes against the rules and ultimately sacrifices his life to bring people who love each other together deserves a day of honor, whether it actually existed or not. If he also heals blind people – chapeau, Monsieur Valentin. But what our society and public generally makes of Valentine’s Day really annoys me and sometimes even affects my mood. For example, I am thinking of the following points.
4 things that annoy me on Valentine’s Day
1. Commercialization
Due to my job, from the last third of January onwards I am traditionally bombarded with PR emails that have the word Valentine’s Day in the subject line. That’s a bit tiring. But it doesn’t just affect my email inbox. It feels like every industry wants to benefit from the day of love. I can still understand it when it comes to flower shops, chocolates and greeting card production. But when all sorts of businesses, from supermarkets to pharmacies and fitness studios to banks and furniture stores, come up with Valentine’s Day promotions around the corner, it becomes a bit much for me. And I hate it. Day of love and marketing event or greed for profit don’t go well together for me.
2. Peer pressure
When I went to school, our student council started a Valentine’s Day campaign every year, where you could – anonymously or not anonymously – write notes with greetings to classmates and throw them into a box, which the members of said student council attached to a chocolate heart attached and distributed on February 14th. Horrible. Of course, every year it boiled down to those who received little or no greetings feeling bad, while the others competed to see who would take home the most chocolate. Congratulations on this great campaign.
Although I no longer go to school, there have been moments in my adult life when I have felt unpleasant peer pressure related to Valentine’s Day. Just the question: “What are you doing for Valentine’s Day?” suggests that it would be natural to do something special on this day. But what if I don’t feel like it? Basically, I feel just as bad as students who come away empty-handed at a Valentine’s Day campaign: left out, not integrated, misunderstood.
3. Exclusivity
In fact, the common, current understanding of Valentine’s Day excludes some people: for example, singles and other people who are not in a classic, romantic relationship. Okay, the legend of the martyr Valentine was about marriage, but we now know that marriage is neither the only form of love nor the best model of life. Friendly love, sibling love, and even good old self-love – on Valentine’s Day, every person should celebrate the love that they feel most strongly at the moment, that makes them happy and gives them support.
4. Pressure of expectations and competition
And while we’re on the subject of opening Valentine’s Day to various forms of love: let’s leave it up to each person, every couple, every family or group of friends to decide how they celebrate or spend it. If your partner’s romantic surprise wasn’t as expensive or elaborate as the one your best friend received, that says nothing about love or the relationship. Just like marriage isn’t the right model of life for everyone, not everyone likes roses, jewelry, perfume, chocolates or candlelight dates. Nobody needs to feel bad or doubt if Valentine’s Day at his/her home doesn’t go like it does in a Disney movie. Everyone can decide for themselves what the perfect Valentine’s Day looks like for them. And perhaps this decision wouldn’t just be a little easier for me if the commercial and public fanfare surrounding our day of love were a little quieter.