i Don't Like Mondays or Valentine's Day

I took most of last week off, at least in terms of actually posting anything to the blog. One of the reasons I took a sabbatical was that it seemed all the blog hops wanted to talk about nothing but Valentine's Day.

Frankly I was at a total loss for anything to say about the fourteenth of February.

Valentine's Day is not an occasion I have fond memories of from childhood.To say I wasn't one of the popular kids is to barely scratch the surface. I dutifully brought Valentines for all my classmates as instructed by my teachers and never seemed to go home with as many as I came with. When we got to high school I was never one to left little notes or stuffed animals by anyone. And frankly I never much cared either.


Moreover, my husband and I never have been into that sort of contrived (as we saw it) "holiday". We thought even less of Sweetest Day. Year after year it seems to get more blown out of proportion,as diamonds and pearls takes the place of boxes of chocolate and longstemmed roses as recomended gifts.

Valentine's Day, like so many other events on our calender, was origanally designed to clean up after those dreadful heathens, in this case the Romans who celebrated a no holds barred fertility festival this time of year. About 1500 years ago the Pope decided to plop down on that date a feast honoring a bishop named Valentine who was supposedly imprisioned in Rome for performing weddings for soldiers who weren't allowed to marry.
The tradition developed of sending messages to loved ones on that date.

In the last century the greeting card, candy and floral industries got into the act, formalizing what was supposed to be a spontaneous gesture of affection. Among young kids, small valentines featuring favorite pop culture figures and candy conversation hearts have become traditional. But in more recent times the jewelry stores and other high end marketers have gotten into the act. Its this last last bit of commercialism I find most annoying. Showing your love with a heartfelt note (or even Hallmark's idea of a heartfelt note) is one thing, insisting that one must give diamonds and furs as a love token is absurd. I find all this to be ridiculous among grown adults, especially when families are so often digging themselves out from Christmas.

In short...remember my birthday,remember our anniversary, but leave Valentine's Day to the kids.

There is one consolation though--there will be half price chocolate at the grocery store on Friday. That I can celebrate.



This post is part of the I Don't Like Mondays blog hop at Mod Mom Beyond Indiedom. To hear more about what people don't like, click on the button.