It’s the big day everyone. I had a post planned to help you with last minute preparations and to pull off a hero’s Valentine’s celebration. But then I decided to let you do that and I’d talk to you about the commercialization of the “holiday” and why I think it sucks.
Valentine’s Day is merely a commercial holiday. Let’s think about this whole pretense of love we’re expressing here. Update* for the short version of the history of Valentine’s Day, see Mike’s comment below*.
Not to mention, since Christmas I’ve been seeing Valentine’s decorations. I’m tired of pink. I’m tired of the Jared’s commercials and the dumb Valentine references and the special food that comes out during this time at big chain restaurants. I am tired of being told during every commercial break that I should expect my significant other to buy me something today because they said so. I don’t feel like it’s a special day. I’m tired of the hype.
Maybe I’m cranky over trade talks but I don’t want to hear anymore about Valentine’s Day. Thankfully, tomorrow is not Valentine’s and we have 364 days until another one pops up.
But presidents day is coming and I’m already hearing about sales. How ’bout a sale just because? How about a commercial about how much time your company donates to charity, and money?
Stop boring me with a made up holiday.
I don’t care for the overcommercialization of the holiday, but it’s been around for a long, long time.
The Vaentine’s Day massecre happened to have occured on a holiday that already existed.
From Wikipedia:
“Using the language of the law courts for the rituals of courtly love, a “High Court of Love” was established in Paris on Valentine’s Day in 1400. The court dealt with love contracts, betrayals, and violence against women. Judges were selected by women on the basis of a poetry reading.”
“The earliest surviving valentine is a fifteenth-century rondeau written by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his “valentined” wife…”
“The reinvention of Saint Valentine’s Day in the 1840s has been traced by Leigh Eric Schmidt. In the United States, the first mass-produced valentines of embossed paper lace were produced and sold shortly after 1847 by Esther Howland (1828-1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts. Her father operated a large book and stationery store, but Howard took her inspiration from an English valentine she had received, so clearly the practice of sending Valentine’s cards had existed in England before it became popular in North America. The English practice of sending Valentine’s cards appears in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mr. Harrison’s Confessions (published 1851).
2008
Mike Goad