valentine’s day sucks. there, i said it.

it all starts out innocently enough. in early grade school i remember the required annual arts and crafts projects, where we’d all fashion giant envelopes out of stapled manila folders, sloppily glue on red construction paper hearts and glitter, add our names in big block letters, then hang them off the sides of our desks. in the weeks before the holiday, we’d have to have our parents take us to buy a box of cheap drugstore valentines – the pressure to select the “right” kind weighing heavily. the teacher would have already distributed a list of class names, and in an attempt at inclusion, we were supposed to write a card out to each and every child. some did, some didn’t, and those of us whose parents made us write one for everyone on the list would still allocate the “worst” of our cards to the kids we disliked. on valentine’s day, we shoved them all into a big box on the teacher’s desk at the front of the room, hoping desperately that at least a few in the pile had our names on them. finally, late in the afternoon, we’d have a party, eating cupcakes and crisps at our desk while the teacher distributed the cards into everyone’s named and decorated folders.

to see some kids’ folders bulging with cards, while some kids’ envelopes held just a few token, parent-enforced valentines … that’s where my dislike of the holiday began. it was a popularity contest, pure and simple. i was always somewhere in the middle, but i always feared being one of those kids whose thin folder told the world they were a loser.

in middle school and high school, it only got worse. the schools (in a brilliant stroke of fundraising) offered carnations (or for high-schoolers, roses) that you could purchase and have sent with a note to your “valentine”, for the whole school to see. as in grade school, there were always some girls who went home with their arms full of flowers, and many, like me, who felt hopelessly uncool because we had none. the pressure to be “in a relationship” on the day, just so someone would be obligated to send you a flower, was intense. if you weren’t “dating” someone, you were unsophisticated and inexperienced. and god help you if you happened to be gay – the social isolation already experienced by those kids was only brought into sharper focus by a holiday which emphasised just how different they were. they weren’t just shy and inexperienced – they were outcast non-participants.

as an adult, all the gut-instinctive things i hated about the holiday as a kid have only been reified. the obligation to spend money, the perpetuation of heteronormative stereotyping, the portrayal of women as wanting/needing to be showered with prescribed gifts of diamonds/chocolates/roses/childish teddybears, the pressure to publicly display affection, the cheapening of genuine sentiment by demanding it be expressed on a given day, and the social exclusion of people who are either not in a typical monogamous romantic relationship, or (horrors!) not in a relationship at all… it all adds up to a big giant yuk.

so i’m boycotting valentine’s day. we don’t need more flowers, cards or chocolates in this world …we need more real love, understanding, and acceptance.

and what i want to know is, where’s the holiday for *that*?!

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