Manufactured And Moneygrabbing, But Not All Bad

Grown-ups don’t really like St Valentine’s Day.  It’s legalized robbery, an annual fleecing marshalled by the floristry, chocolate, underwear and advertising industries.  And it’s a yearly reminder of all the painful Valentine’s Days at school, of the desks of beautiful and popular classmates crowded with cards and soft toys, while our own had only the usual battered pencil tin for adornment.  Yes, Valentine’s is a right old load of crap.

But how about rethinking all this on a more constructive note?  Think about the situation from a man’s point of view, for instance.  Now, men aren’t generally the best communicators.  On any other day of the year, if you’re waiting for him to bring home a spontaneous bouquet of “I love you” flowers, you could be in for a long wait.  He’s more likely to take up tap lessons or remember your mother’s birthday.  It’s not that he has no feelings for you – it’s more that he takes it as read that you know about them.  He may even go so far as to claim that daily a proclamation of his feelings might devalue them somewhat, making the act as automatic and unthinking as heading to the toilet to pee on getting up.  And nobody wants that kind of thing. 

But St Valentine’s Day is a globally recognized marking of romantic relationships.  And, feelings of being forced into it aside, he’s hardly likely to forget about it or ignore it when it’s all over television and radio and plastered on every bus and billboard he sees.  So it gives him a focus; it’s a reminder for him to let you know how important you are – and it’s only one day, he can live with that.  And because every other attached man is in the same boat, he doesn’t feel such a mug for buying a card and a present or flowers.  Who knows – he may even plan in advance and book a table for dinner.

And maybe that means that Valentine’s Day is not only a day for him to tell you how he feels, but also a day for all men to declare in an organized, almost public way, how they feel about their other halves.  Of course it’s less embarrassing when other men are doing it too, but by the same token we’re also doing it in front of them.  So the journey on the bus home with a bushel of ruinously expensive weeds in cellophane under his arm becomes part of that declaration, an important part that says: “I’m taking these tokens of my esteem home to give them to my significant other, and while I feel a bit silly to be carrying flowers in public, I don’t actually mind that much that everyone knows that they are indeed a token of that esteem, small and insignificant in comparison with the size and depth of that feeling though that token, of course, might be.”

So let’s look on the positive side.  Of course, nobody likes to feel like a sheep being prodded along for shearing, but think of it in another way – think of it as more of a sanctioned day of public slop.  I think that’s how men deal with it.

Contact the author here: thewhy@morningquickie.com