Valentine's Day - Celebration of Love
We’ve hardly taken down our Christmas decorations and our peripheral vision is slowly picking up a bunch of red signals. Not surprisingly so, the V Day is coming. Shop windows are becoming filled with hanging hearts, chocolate hearts are luring us in and radio programmes are tuning us to the right kind of mood with well-known love songs and an occasional new hit. And even if you truly dislike Valentine’s Day and its (usually) materialistic display, surely you won’t be able to resist to watch at least one of the romantic films they’ll show on TV. Even if it’s for the seventh time.
Love is all around …
Valentine’s Day is generally regarded as a celebration for those in love. However, romantic love is not the only kind of love and more and more people use this opportunity to express their affection, regardless if it’s towards a friend or a person they respect. Even though Valentine’s Day is not a bank holiday in any country, it is celebrated worldwide with open expressions of love. It truly is a day when love is all around.
It started with a …
If you’re a V-Day cynic and regard it as a pure money-spending invention of the 20th century capitalist world, you might be surprised to learn that the Romans celebrated a similar festival and that it was English king Henry VIII who declared February 14 St Valentine’s Day in the 16th century. The date has stuck around ever since.
Looking for (a g)love?
‘If you happen to find a glove, your future loved one will have the other one!’ is just one of the Valentine’s Day-related superstitions. As February 14 has become popular date to celebrate love, so have many interesting facts been progressively compiling over the years. Most of them refer to the different ways to express love, i.e. signs of affection people give one another.
Say it with …
A card. Millions and millions of cards are given or sent on Valentine’s Day and in the US, it’s the second occasion when such great numbers of cards are given, right after Christmas. Flowers. Chiefly roses, particularly red ones, are sold during these days and it’s mostly men who buy them. Among women there are even those who are both the sender and receiver when buying flowers. Chocolate. Is there a better way than chocolate in a heart-shaped box to tell somebody they are your sweetheart?
Team: In relationship
If you perceive Valentine’s Day as the ideal opportunity to show your loved one how you feel, you might just choose any of the above mentioned gifts and you can’t go wrong with that. However, if you decide to make it a big deal and do something different and personal, you might try any of the following pieces of advice: go stargazing, make a playlist of your favourite songs, surprise your partner with their favourite meal, slip a note in their pocket saying what they mean to you, write a story about the two of you and publish it in the local newspaper etc.
Team: Single
Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love, but it doesn’t mean you should crawl into bed, cover yourself and weep just because you’re single. If nothing else, do what many women in the U.S. do - send yourself a bunch of flowers. Or make it a ‘me day’ - treat yourself to anything that pleases you or just spend the day surrounded by friends, trashtalk Valentine’s day and cheesy lines from soap operas and romantic films. As long as you love yourself, that’s all the love you need. At least, till you find a glove and decide you want to find the other pair.
Conclusion
Just as people like to express love for their parents once a year, so have people chosen Valentine's Day as that one day when they express love to their partner or a friend. Regardless if you buy lavish gifts, make them yourself or choose a non-materialistic display of affection, if it's from the heart, it's just perfect. After all, loving and feeling loved is what it's all about, or as eden ahbez put it 'the greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and loved in return'.
