Valentine’s Day: Love or Ludicrous?

Boys and girls it’s that time of year again: the 14^th February is nearly upon us. It may be one of the most mocked and dismissed holidays of the year, yet the date is engraved into the mind of every lonely heart.

So where will you be spending your Valentine’s Day?

There will of course be those loved up couples, pretending to be more sophisticated than they really are, dining on Risotto and sipping on wine in some dimly lit Italian chain restaurant.

But there will also be others, the singletons, who will stumble out of the Cori Tap on a cider-fuelled waddle to Lounge ‘forgetting’ it’s V-day yet intent on grabbing a fellow lonely heart to drag back to halls and ravage with Cupid’s arrow of love.

Nightclub Cupid strikes again!
Photo: Pressure, Thekla

Given this, it’s tempting to ask if we really need Valentine’s Day. The cynics say no: the day is just another evil product of Capitalist endeavours to make us buy cards and flowers and chocolates in the pretence they actually mean ‘I love you’.

The romantics say yes: a chance to tell your beloved how much they mean, how wonderful they make you feel inside (and maybe even later, how wonderful you can make them feel inside, for sentimental reasons, obviously…).

Like Christmas as a teenager, Valentine’s Day lacks the air of mystery it perhaps once held. As Santa was revealed to be a figment of our imaginations, now we realise all the Valentine’s cards we received up until the age of nine were from our mothers.

Valentine’s Day should be about telling that special someone you care about them, but not for those of you in a relationship. You get that delightful opportunity every day.

Just because 14^th February is named after some Saint doesn’t make your affection for each other more extraordinary. Valentine’s Day should instead be reserved for those waiting for the chance to (anonymously or not) reveal their inner feelings without embarrassment.

Before you get any ideas, this grand reveal shouldn’t be via some intellectual innuendo on ‘Spotted in the ASS’ but (call me old-fashioned) through some intimate gesture, even if it’s a hastily bought card from Clinton’s signed ‘your secret admirer…’.

We can all do better than this

This all may sound idealist, so enjoy your Valentine’s Day regardless, and dabble in the idea of romance if you have the courage. Just don’t be stupid enough to let anything on to your friends.

And for God’s sake if you are going to venture to Lounge, at least be romantic enough to offer that lucky someone a Jason Donervan before you take them back to yours.