Valentine’s Day. Mother-Fucking-God-Damned-Valentines-Day. Need I say more? I am so perpetually irritated by this day that I couldn't even muster the internal fortitude to write about it yesterday.We spend $13 billion dollars on this silliness every year. By “we” I mean everyone else because I simply refuse to participate. I am offended by this day on multiple levels. First it commoditizes the emotion love. Our ability (or our curse) to love being, you know, the one thing that truly sets us apart as a species. So let’s take that precious gift of humanity and make it about greeting cards and chocolate.
Second, it is a socially discriminatory holiday. We all know intellectually that this holiday is presented as one that is about the both of you. And in a way it is. It’s about women and the men who buy them things. “Valentines day is my favorite holiday!” she squeaks. Well of course it is. If I had a day when it was all about me and I got an endless stream of candy, flowers and gifts that I didn’t need for doing absolutely nothing it would be my favorite holiday too.
But the real object of my disdain is the psychic trauma this Hallmark Holiday has caused generations of children. You see, in order to feed this frenzy of unnecessary commerce we need to indoctrinate children with it. Hence the school valentine exchange phenomenon. For some reason, adults think it’s appropriate to force children to give each other “valentines”. It’s just… wrong. These are kids. Valentines are proclamations of love. This is fucked up. Not to mention this is typically a traumatic event for many children. “Will the cool kid give me a valentine?” “My little Valentine box is empty because no one loves me.” “People hate me because I am fat.” This is where all those social stratifications and class wars begin my friends. This is the moment that forges the reality of our society and causes the divisiveness that follows us though our lives. It has infected us ever since that first valentine was slipped into that first, crappy shoebox decorated with glitter and Elmer’s glue. I believe that it is, in fact, Valentines Day which is responsible for the majority of our societal ills. It feeds this innate antipathy we have toward one another which manifests itself in conflict, violence and hatred. It brews and festers in the collective consciousness of us all until at some point all this frustration anxiety and hatred swirls around the universe and ends up in the Middle East. Don’t ask me how. It just does.
I think we should celebrate this day in the historical context of its origins.
“To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at the sacred cave. The priests would then sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. The boys then sliced the goat's hide into strips, dipped them in the sacrificial blood and took to the streets, gently slapping both women and fields of crops with the goathide strips. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed being touched with the hides because it was believed the strips would make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would then each choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman.”
Now that’s a holiday tradition I can get behind.
2 comments:
Valentine's day always reminds me of when I was in high school, wearing all black, and my Dad... bless his heart, purchased for me a sweatshirt with a cuddly teddybear holding a heart on it. He was trying so hard but I'm sure I made some smart-ass, thoughtless teenage comment and crushed his feelings.
Now, as the parent who had to create 27 valentines for all the kids in the preschool class, I like to agree with your sentiment about valentine's day for the children. It totally sucks. And now, because of everyone's concern that all kids feel included and the avoidance of cliches... instead of putting the child's name on the card, we were instructed to put the corresponding letter that we found on the instructions sent from the teacher. My son was a "T". Yeah... there isn't a frickin "t" anywhere in his fucking name... like that isn't going to confuse a child trying to learn to spell? So I had to make all these valenties addressed to "A", "B", "C", etc. And worse, you can't just send a card. It has to be a card and candy or stickers or tattoos or some other completely useless garbage, because you don't want to be the parent who sends your kids with only cards thus making your kid "that kid".
I hate valentines day. (However, my husband did get me roses and lemon parfait desserts from KFC and that was really sweet so I still love him even if I hate the day.)
I don't get the whole lettering thing, Patina. So every kid in the class just gets a bunch of anonymous Schreck scratch & stink stickers from each other? Sounds stoopid.
I recall the exchange of valentines to be a demoralizing experience in elementary school. There were always a couple of unfortunate kids in each class who were the "losers." Usually there was one boy and one girl. They were either dumb or fat or ugly or dirty or some combination of the above. But among the compulsory valentines these children received would invariably be several cruelly taunting or even threatening messages from the other children.
"Happy Valentines Day! I'm gonna beat you up after school."
"Be mine! You're a fatso."
"You ugly fuck."
I can't remember the rest. But man, we tormented those kids. :-)
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