VDAY = DDAY

Well my fellow readers, in case you haven’t guessed it already  this post is about valentine’s day probably the worst holiday of all time. And no, I’m not a narcisistic person and I don’t hate the holiday because its a ‘hallmark-created holiday’ although that is one of the reasons. More so, I apologize in advance to those who it bothers for me to compare Valentine’s Day to D-Day (aka Pearl Harbor). Clearly, Pearl Harbor and the real D-Day is far worse than Valentine’s day, but I’m using it as a metaphor to show my extreme hatred (and yes, I mean hatred) for this day.

So, before I even get started I might as well give you all history of Valentine’s Day. According to Wikipedia.org, Valentine’s Day is actually Saint Valentine’s Day, and dedicated to an early Christian Martyr named Saint Valentine. Pope Gelasius I created this day in 496 AD, and was in fact deleted in 1969 by a later Pope from the Roman calendar. There are other myths, legends, and changes in regards to the day itself. I could bore you all with the non-gorey details but why do such a thing when I can just send you to the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_day

 

If you are to gourge in the extravagance of Valentine’s Day, here’s what I highly suggest:

* Top Five Best Chocolates:

1. Lindt Chocolate

2. Godiva Chocolate

3. Lake Champlain Chocolates

4. Ghiradelli Chocolate

5. Hershey’s? Maybe? Question Mark?

* Top Five Organic/Fair Trade Chocolates:

1. Chocolove

2. Equal Exchange

3. Dagoba

4. Endangered Species Chocolate (duh save the animals AND eat chocolate! what’s better?!)

5. Green and Black’s

 

* Top Twenty Rom-Coms of ALL TIME (that’s romantic comedies, kids!)

1. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

2. The Notebook (duh – Mera says its the best of all time SAP)

3. 27 Dresses

4. Love Actually

5. Definitely, Maybe

6. (500) Days of Summer

7. 13 Going on 30

8. What Women Want

9. Love Story

10. The Proposal

11. Sweet Home Alabama*** (gets THREE stars out of THREE)

12. Crazy, Stupid, Love

13. Because I Said So

14. P.S. I Love You

15. Good Luck Chuck (be careful, mild porn)

16. Atonement

17. Pride and Prejudice

18. My Best Friend’s Wedding

19. Going the Distance (makes me want to cry because of my ‘current’ state of love affairs)

20. Titanic (not necessarily a comedy, but a definite)

- Honorable Mentions:

a) Valentine’s Day

b) New Year’s Eve

c) Glee

 

* Top Five Romantic Disney Movies:

1. Pocahontas

2. Mulan

3. Little Mermaid

4. Lion King

5. Princess and the Frog

6. Aladdin

7. Beauty and the Beast

8. Sleeping Beauty

9. Cindrella

10. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

(pretty much just the disney princess series)

ok, so maybe I’ve gotten a bit off topic. Back to romance.

 

Anyway, here are the reasons why I hate V-Day:

1) When I was in middle school, I had the perfect Valentine’s Day so my expectations were high for the rest of my life.

2) A year later, my boyfriend had broken up with me and started dating a dear friend of mine for Vday. Woops, sorry Laura’s Feelings (my own not somebody else named Laura).

3) I finally decided that I would go ski race during Valentine’s Day. Of course I was number 69 and fell. Both runs.

4) College Valentine’s Days have been pretty awful, minus the chocolate fountain they do in the Pub every year. That’s a plus.

5) It is a hallmark holiday. Enough said. (Sorry Kelly!)

 

But the question that I pose is this: what is Valentine’s Day REALLY about? Heart-shaped candies and red roses? Going out on movie dates, expensive dinners and sex? Is it about kissing under the moonlight, and romantic gestures grander than the sun rising? To me, Valentine’s Day is supposed to be about expressing your love for people. Why does a stupid holiday have to give you a reason to love? And why does it have to be intimate love, when it can just be love for your best friends or family? The holiday is played up by Jared, David’s Bridal, Hershey’s Chocolate, and Sony Pictures for Rom Coms (which by the way are my favorite cheesy movies), so that each person spends money that we don’t have just to find happiness. But what IS happiness? How do we become happy? In a world where we are told that the idea of having posssessions makes us happy, its been scientifically proven that our overall joy has decreased with civilization. Primitivism even says that the more stuff we have, the less happier we become. I cringe at the thought of owning too much that I can’t pack my car, or having unlimited amounts of food and drink when there are people starving, all causing the world to chaotically decline into the abyss of dark horrendous emptiness. If Valentine’s Day is supposed to be symbolic of anything, it should be symbolic of love. And I’m not talking about deep love for your significant other, whether you’re gay, lesbian, straight, transgender, bisexual, and feel a draw towards boys, girls, or sexually confused people. I’m talking about a love that stems from our inner core, and that once existed in our instincts. I’m talking about a love that signifies a deep connection to every living or non-living thing that we consume and interact with everyday; pencils, computers, people, leaves, roots, animals, everything. Its that love that we’ve lost and tried to replace by eating pounds of chocolate, drinking wine, and watching sappy rom coms on the ‘love day’ so that we feel better about ourselves. Friends, family, foes, I challenge you this: on the day that commences in approximately four hours, change one thing about how you look at Valentine’s Day. If you love the holiday for what it is or because you have a significant other, then make someone else who is having a horrid Valentine’s Day amazing. Tell someone who you don’t normally tell, that you love them. Say hi to someone who is walking with their head towards the ground as if the whole world is going to end, and the clouds of rain are pouring down their spine and chilling them to the core. Do something different; do something extraordinary. Make somebody’s day tomorrow. Did you know that according to Time Magazine’s study Tuesday is the most common day for suicide? Tomorrow is a Tuesday combined with upset lonely Valentine’s Day people. So if you’re going to gourge on chocolate and rom coms do it with your best friend. Take a minute away from your significant other (if you have one) and just send a text or call your single friends or family members so they know you care. Trust me, it will make their day.

Happy Lovin’.

“There is no remedy for love, but to love more.”

- Thoreau