Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. This holiday is no good for anyone.
Couples are forced to awkwardly exchange gifts and profess affection. In case you were wondering, chumps who are in love should probably acknowledge it more than once a year. Being mandated to do so by a traditional Anglican and Lutheran holiday also wrecks any pretense of being genuine.
Valentine’s Day a relationship booby trap. That’s why the first scene of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark is set on Valentine’s Day. It’s all a big allegory. Look it up.
It shouldn’t be hard to maintain your uncomfortable smile as your partner opens your gift – which is almost certainly useless, and likely overpriced as well. Not to mention automatically tease-worthy.
Singles do their best to pretend they don’t mind being alone on a day praising romance. As they open cards from their moms, feeling plenty pathetic, they secretly dream of a day when enough people are in Congress to officially convert the holiday to Single’s Awareness Day.
Sympathy also must be extended to elementary school students. Horrifyingly, they must buy and distribute Valentines to all their classmates. Imagine their squirms as they confront the unrestrained mushy gushiness! Meanwhile, their teachers are almost undoubtedly in the back of the classroom, snickering and watching Raiders of the Lost Ark over and over again.
Who can we blame? No one really even knows how this mess got started. There are at least three different Christian saints named Valentinus. The most popular holiday origin myth is that one Valentinus (or maybe all three) fell in love with a jailor’s daughter while imprisoned and wrote her a letter before his execution in the third century.
But we can’t put all the blame on Valentinus or his would-be lover. The holiday really took off in the high Middle Ages, when the nobles considered formal romantic gestures proper and fashionable. And the whole thing might have just been a Christian coup of some Roman romance festival.
Whatever the case may be, we are stuck with a no-win holiday. Single, partnered, young or old, good luck tomorrow.
