My least favorite holiday is Easter. On the one hand it's a ritualistic celebration of human blood sacrifice; on the other its this orgy of chocolate and bunny-rabbit-themed kitsch. Either of those is terrifying enough as it is; mash them up together and it's just macabre dissonance. Also, I hate spring.
My second least favorite holiday is Valentine's Day. It fell quickly down in ranking after grade school, when my friends all had boyfriends and I spent weekend nights at home with my parents. When Valentine's Day rolled around, I could count on boxed chocolates from my mom. I imagined that chocolates from a boy would taste better, but since I had never received any gift from a suiter it was really just speculation. I yearned for flowers from a secret admirer, or a romantic surprise in my locker from that guy I'd had a crush on forever. But every year I was reminded that while I may have discovered boys, none of them had discovered me. So I stayed home eating heart-shaped meatloaf while my parents went out, wondering how I'd managed to be so tragically alone. I didn't have acne. I had boobs. Surely that was all it took to attract the attention of a male adolescent.
Now I dislike Valentine's Day for different reasons entirely. I dislike what it represents, what it promotes, what it perpetuates. I don't care about the fact that it commercializes love; Valentine's Day hardly has a monopoly on that. What bothers me is how it reduces love to romance; that it makes love out to be a set of superficial rituals instead of the meaningful day-to-day actions that go unannounced and uncelebrated. It tells American men that it's OK for them to be useless jerks 364 days of the year, as long as they bring it on VDay, the day when it really matters how you treat your lover. The rest of the year? Those are just regular days. What does she expect - a guy to make some kind of effort every day?!? Psshhht!
Romance is lovely, but the only kind of romance worth having is the romance built on living love. I don't care about getting flowers from a guy who will never be bothered to take out the trash. And if a guy always takes out the trash? Then I don't care so much about getting flowers from him.
A woman is lying if she says she doesn't want to be surprised by jewelry or gifts. But Valentine's Day isn't about being surprised - it's about being obliged. Because it's Valentine's Day. I guess I don't understand what is so flattering or exciting about being given something you're expecting someone to give you. It's not so much romance then as it is passive-aggressive.
Love is what happens every day, and if it's not there every day, one wonders why go to the expensive trouble on one day just to celebrate a vacuum. Love is lived in the mundane details - the laundry that gets done, the dishes that are washed, the meals that are made, the time carved out of busy days to spend together. It's the patient endurance of each other's quirks and the willingness to be a little bit uncomfortable if it means the other one has it a little bit better. It's finding a balance with another between selfishness and sacrifice, so that in giving things up you find that you are only given more.
And a day to remember to tell your lover that they are loved? If they don't know it, telling them on an appointed day won't make it true and will only make it trivial. But a woman who hears those words each night as she falls asleep in strong arms doesn't need to be given diamonds to know beyond doubt that she is somebody's treasure.