Why We Love & Hate Valentine's Day

As we know, Valentine's Day started off with a Christian legend. Once upon a time, there was a boy with a bow and an arrow...

just kidding!

Basically, Mr. Valentine (whoever he was) was 'beheaded' on February 14 and the world decided to celebrate love.

On February 15, Ancient Roman priests created Lupercalia celebration and established its customs which involved a  (Lupercal) cave and the sacrificing of a goat and a dog. After the sacrificing, noble youth went about the town with goatskin thongs as these were sacred to good child bearing. The thongs were called februa and februatio, which is also where the month "February" gets its name. The celebration was likely established in the hopes of good crops.

After Paganism became frowned upon, certain festivals like Lupercalia were given Christian names. "St. Valentine's Day" was born and became a celebration of mating in light of springtime and fertility. The celebration quickly spread and various cultures adapted the tradition with some variations to its customs.

Now, Valentine's Day is a day to celebrate consumerism. No longer a festival in its old, cheerful  and sacred form, it is now a day many people come to hate. Of course, consumerism plasters love all over everything and anything. In the process, consumerism takes all the fun out of love and makes us think of the fact that love should exist all the time and not just on the one day. Of course, we don't argue over the idea that a celebration is usually meant to be sort of a spotlight or a snapshot to an ongoing thing. And so we go all out.

Celebration of Valentine's Day becomes a chore, hence all of the anti-Valentine's Day bitterness going around. I personally like to claim that the things people now do on Valentine's Day, they should practice daily/weekly. But apparently some couples actually don't get this idea or don't love each other enough to get cheesy more often.

Then we get people who are not in relationships and feel lonely even if they don't necessarily want to be spending the day with someone. Seeing every other couple prance around, even if they look like they completely hate each other, tends to bring that emotion. And let's not forget mating. That shit comes in the form of overbooking every single hotel in the city and going at it all at once.

Now that's a celebration!

Of course, if we look at it in that way, Valentine's Day is kind of...nasty.

So, what ruined Valentine's Day for us? Consumerism. The second we let everyone else make money off of us, they jumped at the chance just like they do around Christmas time and any other hot holiday. I would do the same, wouldn't you? And let's not forget the crazy girlfriends who threaten to break up with their significant others if they don't receive candy, flowers and teddy-bears from them. I am serious, this is 53% of women according to a U.S census.

Lolcats.

So, really. We create the hype and then complain that we suffer from it.

Anyways, I am going to go mate drink love potion. Not because it's Valentine's Day but because it is my Anniversary. Yes, we couldn't pick a better date. There is reasoning behind my irony - I am like a guy and I don't really remember important dates. In order to help both of us, I rounded it to a holiday we could both remember.

PS: Don't propose to your woman today or I will personally come to your house. And you won't like me when I'm angry.