The War on Valentine's Day
Love ya.
In the run-up to Cupid's Day, the battle lines are drawn. On one side, there are those who revel shamelessly in the sodden sentimentality (romanticism is an altogether too lofty word) of this brazenly consumerist occasion to cheapen and trivialize that most complex of human emotions by expressing it with stuffed bears, heart-shaped candies, racy underwear, and brightly-colored, vibrating "toys".
And on the other side are those who are single.
I've written before about the upswelling of anti-Valentine's Day sentiment, which seems to be keeping pace with the upselling of the pro-Valentine's Day forces. Each year what you have to do to show your love seems to become more elaborate and expensive, and each year what you have to do in protest seems correspondingly bolder and bitterer — forget broken heart cookies and cupid piñatas, Anti-Valentine's Day is becoming a holiday in its own right, with its own product line.
And there are those in The Resistance who have taken to appropriating the day for loftier purposes still. Those who, for example, have proclaimed February 14th National Singles Awareness Day, a day dedicated to rationalizing away your abject failure at intimate relationships, discussing your depression at being alone (in anonymous chatrooms, of course), and maybe even treating yourself to a romantic evening at home, alone, with yourself, again. Don't forget to pick up an extra bottle of Astroglide and a jumbo box of tissues!
The Globe helpfully characterizes the anti-VD camp as "haters and singles," and offers a full menu of anti-Valentine's Day events for them, including singles bowling and karaoke at Kings in Back Bay, a chick flick at the multiplex, and "Guitar Hero Night" at Somerville's Good Time Emporium. Or you could just stay home and jab knitting needles in your eyes repeatedly, which promises to be about as much fun.
Even those who favor an across-the-aisle, bipartisan approach to Valentine's Day somehow end up just adding insult to injury. Nancy Schimelpfening, about.com's Depression Guide, sympathizes with a disgruntled single: "I've completely lost touch with what it's like to be a single, depressed person on Valentine's Day. Looking back, I remember many days when I would see happy couples walk by and I would be eaten up by jealousy and anger. If you're feeling lonely, Valentine's Day is just a painful reminder of how alone you feel."
She has the same old helpful hints for the embittered and depressed as all the other VD boosters:
- Don't feel there is something wrong with you if you're not in a relationship. There would be something wrong with you if you were in a relationship, too! In fact, you'd be TWICE THE LOSER, since there would be two of you then!
- Treat yourself to something special on Valentine's Day. You deserve it. Gorge on chocolate! Eat yourself into a food coma! Drink yourself into oblivion! And then do that "something special," like how about not throwing up all over yourself, the cat, and your bedclothes tonight? Or maybe not cyber-stalking your "ex" (who you went on ONE DATE with three years ago, who wouldn't kiss you even when you BEGGED him, and who finally let you give him a blowjob in the car after you THREATENED to scream "rape!" if he didn't) for once?
- Be careful not to choke on the chord when you're doing your little autoerotic asphyxiation thing after gorging on chocolates, champagne, and Xanax! And remember, safe-words don't do you much good when you're hanging by your belt from the closet door ALONE.
It would be better if singles could just ignore the taunts, of course, and everyone could just do their own thing, but the commercial blitz that accompanies this celebration of couplehood starts immediately after Christmas. And it's virtually impossible to tune out. Singles are thus relegated to either acknowledging their lack and viewing the day as a solemn opportunity to meditate on the cause of it, or to reject it outright as just another excuse for cheap commercialization and scorn those who fall for it.
So, singles, what will it be this year?
It must be in the air. I am busy working on my own piece about St. Valentine.
C'mon baby, I'll buy you a burrito. I wonder if they have heart shaped ones for the holiday at El Pelon?
Reply to this
Christmas is one of the "most reviled" holidays? This may be true for Boston Globe readers and members of the ACLU, but I can't imagine this is a common sentiment. In fact, I would seriously doubt it.
While people may criticize the commercialism associated with Christmas, most do not "revile" it.
Reply to this
Well, I usually hate this guy and his coloumns, but this one isn't bad. Oh, and Mike, spare us all the picture, will ya. Can't beleive you are actually a teacher - god help the people that you teach.
Reply to this
Oh, hi, Me. Thanks for the high praise. And as for the shirtless pic (I'm assuming you're not talking about the one of my eyeball), I know it must be shocking for students to realize that their teachers take their shirts off sometimes, horror of horrors. I know I was traumatized when I discovered that they don't wear turtlenecks on the beach.
Though I am no longer teaching (I was in adult ed for most of my teaching career, by the way) I am still a member in good standing of Pedagogues Without Shirts, an international organization dedicated to preserving every teacher's basic human right to mow the lawn, swim, shower, and sleep shirtless.
And thank you for reminding me. I haven't abbed you all in awhile. So, here you go:
Consider my PWS dues paid for the quarter.
Reply to this
I don't know anyone who reviles Christmas. Even my non-Christian friends don't 'revile' it. Had to point that out.
I am married, and my husband and I have never celebrated Valentine's Day, because it is cheap and silly. And I don't get off on some kind of schadenfreude because other people are single. Please stop assigning feelings to other people. You are off the mark.
Reply to this
First off, diamond, I would like to offer my sincere and heartfelt apologies to you and your husband for personally "assigning feelings" to you. Now that you mention it, I realize I have been guilty of doing this in the past, as well. When I had the audacity to suggest that people are cranky when they don't have their morning coffee, or that some people like the color blue. I have been terribly insensitive.
But please try to understand, I don't do it on purpose. It's just that I am unenlightened. See, I had thought I was writing a silly little rant about the media's offering up false choices, as with the inane, for-and-against Christmas campaigns Fox has launched in years past (thus those who "revile" Christmas, which, as you rightly point out, nobody really does). And how The Globe, in characterizing those who might not be hip to the holiday at hand as "haters and singles" is basically using the same template. I thought it was all sort of silly and comical, myself.
Thanks to you, I now realize how presumptuous and "off the mark" I was in assigning intelligence enough to some readers to get that.
Me sorry. Ugga ugga.
Is that better?
Reply to this
I for one appreciate your shirtless pictures, though after gardening next to you for the past few years, I have to say they don't do you justice.
I also think that some people really need to get off the PC wagon for a few minutes and see if they can find their sense of humor, or if they never had one, they might consider asking for one for Valentine's Day. In a red flocked, heart shaped box of course.
Yeeeesh!
Reply to this