WARNING: LONG, MESSY AND INCOMPLETE.
To speak against the designation of a specific meaningless date, February 14, to represent a meaningful day, Valentine’s Day.
Why are we celebrating Valentine’s Day(“Vday”)? Wikipedia says “It is the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other; sending Valentine’s cards and candy, (and flowers)”. In what way is Vday traditional? Does the fact that people have been doing it for years make it right to continue doing it in the future? What real meaning does Vday have? Obvious is that people are celebrating love is it not? There is meaning to Vday because of that. However, creating an artificial day and injecting meaning into it does not qualify it to become a meaningful day, much less one to signify something as momentuous as love.
Christmas and CNY have set dates on the calendar because it is enshrined in tradition and history. There as specific reasons and historical fact behind the choosing of those dates, as well as solid reasoning behind why those days are suitable for what they represent. Whereas however much Vday is said to stand for something good and pure, it turns out to be a commercialised day where companies conviced people that that date holds a meaning it really didn’t, and thus in succeeding, the deception is implanted in people’s minds and now they are set to make a quick buck out of it.
It’s alright to spend more, it’s perfectly fine and resonable to spend that extra money to make the loved one feel special. I’m not debating the purpose of celebrating love, nor against the celebrating of it. Love has been around since forever, and rightly so should it be grandly celebrated. However, Vday is not a special day for love as there is no real meaning behind the actual date despite corporations saying that it does. Days that really do signify love are anniversaries; in other words days that commemorate milestone events. Just by appointing a day and saying that day is to honour love is a try hard attempt to map the clouds. What does 14th February mean to you actually. Did anything special happen on that day that you wish to commemorate? If there was, did it happen just because that day was Vday? If that’s so, then it could have happened on any other day as well in truth, and it wouldn’t be reason enough to justify Vday as special due to the self-fulfilling prophecy of things happeningon Vday because it is Vday and not Vday being Vday because things happened in the first place.
People don’t celebrate love on Vday for the sake of celebrating love, they are celebrating because it is expected of them, that they are told to do so, and that everyone else is doing it. Although they might have the right intentions of celebrating love on Vday, it is not what vday is actually about.
Celebrating something on a day that actually has no meaning related to it is in fact not doing justice to the cause. Just because that date has been used to represent it for ages still makes it cheapening the real thing. Why subject yourselves to the whim and fancy of those corporations in following the hallmark holidays? Should love be celebrated because they tell you to, or because you want to. The way 14th February was just chosen to Vday means any other day has equal right to be a day to celebrate love. There would be no gain nor loss of meaning to the associated day when there were none to begin with.
If you found out that your birthday was actually not the date that you thought it was, and the present date actually was a lie that someone told you and charged you more for cake on that day, and later you found out. Wouldn’t you get pissed? What if he didn’t charge you more? Then you probably would only be slightly irked. Same applies to Vday. You are paying more on a day that you are told you have to buy stuff that costs more. And you are actually willingly doing it. If Vday were instead honestly for the celebration of love and everything costs the same as any other day, then there would be no ill intention to it being on 14th February, as it would just happen to be a day that the buyer chooses to be Vday, and not a day the seller chooses to take advantage of the buyer.
If the mentality that if things would work they would be this way is true, then there would be no change in the world because equilibium has already been reached. But it has not been reached. The world has not settled into balance. As such a lot of things that can be are not, and things that should not be still are. There is no excuse that just because Vday is on the 14th that its there because thats what it is meant to be and people want it to be. Did you choose it to be? I don’t think so. Which day is special to you?
What would be honest to love is if people choose to have their own Vday. Not the commercial Vday but one that holds meaning true and dear to them. One that touches their hearts and brings back happy memories. Let not what people say distort the good intention that was meant to be. Vday was never meant to be assigned a specific date. It is the representation of the love we feel, on a date we ourselves have an attachement to.
