In Anticipation of the Day; Why I Dislike V-Day

Valentine's Day has become the most irritating of institutionalized holidays.  I hate it.  I hate it when I'm single, and the rare times when I have been in a position to go on a date on the day, the job has mercifully saved me from it.  I would not like it on a boat, I would not like it with Navy's Goat... You get the picture.  So, in proper Canadian Parliamentary Debate Style, I will elucidate my disgust for this most saccharine and pitiful of holidays.



Mr Speaker, as the Prime Minister I have a crucial cultural bill to present to the House today.  After many years of seeing a particular day used as a bludgeon against reason and the true definition of romance, I present Bill C-101- Be it Resolved that Valentine's Day No Longer Be Recognized as Anything Other than A Catholic Feast Day.  I will address the issue in the following manner: I will first give a brief history and origin of the holiday itself, which will naturally raise a crucial point as to why its present incarnation is junk.  I will then move on to discuss the inherent classist and sexist mores inculcated by the continued practice of this holiday (where I will, and I cannot emphasize this enough, only briefly discuss commercialism).  Finally, I will discuss the wholly negative philosophical lessons imparted by the holiday in its current incarnation.

To begin, whence Valentine's Day?  Naturally, it is an abbreviation of the Catholic Feast Day of Saint Valentine.  Even in the Catholic Church however, there is some ambiguity as to which Saint Valentine (as several early Catholic priests with variations on the name Valens were martyred) is responsible for the day.  One suspects, as was common at the time, that the Church merely found a good martyr story that could coincide with a pre-existing pagan festival (Lupercalia in this case), and thus co-opt it.  Regardless, the whole point of the Day (as reinforced later by Chaucer) was the celebration of the ability of Romantic Love to overcome all.  You see, the generally accepted martyr myth is that Saint Valentine was a small-time priest that performed marriages for early Christians during the persecutions of Claudius II.  More seriously, he performed marriages for Legionnaires who had converted, thus undermining the Empire's spiritual authority (the Emperor was God too, or at least a God).  Thus, he was executed in a suitably gruesome manner for having the nerve to defy worldly authority in the name of love.  So what is my problem with the Day now?  If the purpose of the day was to celebrate love in the face of adversity, we have fallen very far indeed.  As I will address in a later point, rather than being a celebration of the supremacy of love, the day has become a hodge-podge of various excuses, and worst of all, it is expected of you to celebrate it.  Should you be in a reasonably new, but somewhat stable relationship, what adversity has your relationship faced? What has your love conquered, the Mighty Legion of Scheduling Conflicts?  It's ridiculous, and it is an intolerable diminution of a truly admirable concept.

Secondly, the way that our society further perverts an admirable concept comes from craven materialism, and genderist hypocrisy.  In a society that tries to claim that genders are equal, why is it that a young man is graded on his performance on this day by the monetary value of the soirée?  A local radio station had an on-air contest, the prize being a dinner for two at the magnificent and expensive Saint-Amour, for the caller who had the best "cheap Valentine's Day date" story.  The implications were clear; should a young man fail to provide a suitably chic and pricey evening, he would be fodder for mockery in following years.  Never mind that not all men can afford a high-class restaurant, nor do all relationships merit such!  To make matters worse, it is always the man who is expected to come up with the cash and concept.  Essentially, the feminine society says "It's Valentine's Day- you're going to 'surprise' me with an expensive dinner somewhere nice. And if you don't, you'll suffer for it".  I challenge anyone to provide me with anything other than anecdotal evidence that this is not true- I surveyed all of my acquaintances (21 to be precise, and I rounded because I don't know 5.3 percent of people) who had plans for Valentine's Day. 100% of the men said they knew their girlfriends expected something nice on the day. 5% were busy on the day of, and thus had arranged for something "extra-nice" (read- more expensive) to make up for the supposed failure. 0%, yes not a single one, of the women were doing anything other than dropping hints as to what type of chocolates they prefer. I'll take your right to vote back now, if you don't mind.  Bad enough that the holiday has been mercilessly commercialized by just about anyone who can make even the most tenuous of links, but now young men have even more pressure and reason to be nervous because they know they're being graded on the event. It's almost a no-win situation, because the woman expects to be impressed.  Rather than scoring points for impressing his lady, the young man now has to face the risk of losing points merely because it happens to be a particular calendar date. You win, you get to keep what you've got. You lose, and you suffer. It's totally arbitrary, needlessly expensive, and frankly insulting.

Finally, and this is the most personally offensive aspect, this Day paradoxically constitutes a "Get out of Being a Shit Boyfriend Free" card.  You see, the previous point, where I mentioned that the day becomes a negative-sum game for the man, really only applies to men who are average or good boyfriends.  If you are a shit boyfriend, however, and you pull off an average, or even only mildly poor, showing on Valentine's Day, you can guarantee an instant trip to the good books.  Also, any male friends your girl might have will have to suffer another year of her whining about your inadequacy, but then pathetically defending you when confronted with the truth.  I see it year after year.  Some slob manages to hide his nature long enough to get some girl to agree to date him, whereupon he reverts to his true form.  She whines for months about it, but suddenly he takes her to a stereotypical dinner where he barely manages to fake being a real human being all through dinner, driven by the hopes of "romantic" sex afterwards.  And all is forgiven!  Those of us who aren't tragic failures then have to listen to the girl gush enthusiastically for a few weeks about how good a man he is.  It's like listening to someone taking excessive pride in a full-grown, fully-trained dog because it didn't shit on the carpet this week.  Oh, it shat on the carpet last week, and will shit on the carpet next week, but my Goodness, isn't it just the best dog in all the world?  And terrible boyfriends have spread the word: it is a lesson learned.  All will be forgiven if on February 14th, you can plagiarize a movie effectively.  Women often wonder why men can't be more like men in the movies.  It's because we don't have to be; you'll fool yourself into believing we are over a stereotypical dinner and some chocolate from Wal-Mart.

It has to stop; the pitiful attempts to equate mundane romances with epic love stories. The gynocentric and economically vampiric arbitrary tests of affection.  The hypocrisy and self-delusion.  Enough!  If you love your partner, why do you need to make a production of one day?  What makes February 14th anything other than (in this year's case) just another Sunday?  If your partner cannot surprise you with a truly romantic evening, regardless of its monetary value, on any other day of the year, then perhaps you have more serious problems. For these reasons, Mr Speaker, the proposition must stand.