Stop Talking About Valentine’s Day and You Might Hate It Less

Once again, the Valentine’s period is upon us. There was a time, quite recently that it was confined to a day, but with the proliferation of internet culture you get murmurings of Valentine’s before January’s out, and what was a day’s harmless exuberance is now a whole fucking two weeks’ worth of dross.

I get it. I get why it’s annoying, vapid, consumer driven bollocks, an invention of card companies and completely pointless. What’s most irritating though, is people complaining about it.

Of course with Valentine’s Day there are two camps- single people and people in relationships, which is where seemingly the divide lies. Those couples cosying up, reveling in their Hollywood romances, sneering at the hapless singletons- and the singletons themselves, giving two fingers to the drivel, the sickening drawl.

The truth is though, it’s not like that. We are but one camp, and we all see through what a thinly veiled excuse for a holiday it is, with the only divide being those who indulge and those who don’t. And by indulge, I mean those people somewhere presumably who go in for the whole swans on the lawn, Land Rover sized stuffed animals for breakfast thing. These people are admittedly the problem, as their flagrant declarations of their love on social media irk the cynicism in the rest of us, angry that they can’t see the crushing emptiness of life. The true Valentiners however, depending on what company you keep, are few and far between, heavily outweighed by the scrooges, and it’s because of this that I implore you, stop fucking talking about it.

For every Facebook status of love, there are five more of angry condemnation, and they only serve to draw more attention to it, besides unless the swans on the lawn are fighting with your cat and walking all over the begonias then it doesn’t really effect you anyway. It may be capitalist, subservient nonsense but in reality it’s all fairly inconsequential.

For better or worse, Richard Curtis has to pay the bills and will keep churning out lovey-dovey mush like there’s no tomorrow, so it’s time to stop raging against the Love Actually machine. The overlying attitude to all this should be live and let live, that yes it’s grating and yes it’s superfluous, capitalist frivolity, but really what does it matter? There are far more pertinent things to rage at anyway, be angry about something worthwhile instead of the fact that Ryan luvs his bae 4eva. People will always go over the top, so why not just let them have their fun? The kind of forceful re-education of damning Facebook and blog posts is just self serving wank. What seems like idiocy to us is meaningful to others, so just be zen about it and let bygones be bygones. It’s like getting angry at people for liking Pitbull, and life’s just too fucking short for that.

I myself am in a long term, committed relationship, and we’ll acknowledge Valentine’s like many couples will in our own, reserved way. It’s not to say that we are cold and distant towards each other for 364 days of the year, but rather that it’s just another great excuse to tell each other how much we mean to one another, and that can’t be a bad thing. So on the morning of the 14th, whilst I may have to grit my teeth upon seeing the towering monoliths of talking bears and chocolate love hearts the size of stone fruits, I’ll give a wry smile and let it slide, instead of accidentally jamming my thumb through my phone in fury.

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