we had just about finished singing auld lang syne when hearts started to fill every shop window. it seems that the hype surrounding valentine’s day gets more ridiculous each year.

the idea is innocent enough; a day to celebrate love and romance, a good natured bit of silliness like april fool’s day. unfortunately, greeting card companies, florists, the media et al have turned a bit of fun into something sinister.

it’s the men i feel most sorry for. they feel pressured to pull out all the stops, lest they be seen as uncaring or tight: overpriced roses, ripoff cards, gigantic teddy bears, candlelit dinners in fancy restaurants which end up being far more rushed than romantic. look in any magazine and you will see heaps of gift ideas for valentine’s day, all rather expensive and almost exclusively intended for women. the end result: much additional relationship tension and many empty wallets!

and of course it’s not much fun for the singles either. you can rejoice in the knowledge that you’re best out of all the vomit inducing sentimentality, but as caoimhe noted recently, there is no escape and eventually it must start to grate…

every year you think that the fuss can’t get any worse and then it does. the loved up couples who appreciate valentine’s day don’t need it anyway, and those that are not quite as content usually find that an artificial injection of romance does more harm than good.

luckily i’m looking forward to it this year, but if you’re fed up of hearts and flowers, you could always mark the occasion by sending an anti-valentine instead

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 13th, 2005 at 10:36 am and is filed under pick n mix. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.