You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
Valentines Day.
Yeah, I hear you women cursing me right now. I can feel your thoughts cutting off my manhood and plunging chocolate daggers into my heart for even thinking such blasphemous thoughts. But I don’t care. Someone needs to tell the truth and this is my truth.
Valentine’s day is a made up holiday to promote commerce. It’s the greeting card’s version of the Obama stimulus plan.
I know most of you love hearts and candy and the mushy cards. You like romantic dinners and diamond earrings. You like love and passion and french kisses swirling in chocolate. You like ribbons and bows of pink and red.
That’s fine. Allow yourself to be hypnotized by the socio-economic demons that control this made up holiday. Go ahead, drink in the lie that is Valentines Day. Swim in the warm current of this fabricated, fictional day. go ahead, and reach into your wallet and spend more money than your bank account should allow, all in the name of love. Go ahead and live the dream, because I am immune.
I am the Valentine’s day grim reaper who spits up pea soup and vomits chocolate on your Hallmark moment. Maybe I am drinking from the goblet of ignorance when I publicly share my thoughts. Maybe I’m doing a belly flop into the shallow end of the crazy pool when I declare heretical thoughts that most men won’t dare utter.
Valentines Day is Crazy. It’s a made up holiday like bosses day or shave your poodle’s butt day.
Valentines day benefits restaurants and card companies who plan for February 14th like the Allies planned for D-Day. Store shelves are stocked to the ceiling with Red and white and pink products that order you to buy now or forever be the outcast of love. Restaurants sell out weeks in advance to couples who need to publicly declare their love in a symbolic, saccharin explosion of the absurd.
Maybe I don’t understand Valentines Day so I went to the Google God of information and looked up Cupid. See also: Eros.
EROS was the mischievous god of love, a minion and constant companion of the goddess Aphrodite.
The poet Hesiod first represents him as a cosmic who emerged self-born at the beginning of time to spur procreation. (See the Protogenos Eros and Phanes, for more information.) The same poet later describes two love-gods, Eros and Himeros (Desire), accompanying Aphrodite at her birth from the sea-foam. Some classical authors interpreted this to mean they were born of the goddess at her birth, or alongside her in the sea-foam. The scene was particular popular in art, where the pair flutter around the goddess seated in her floating conch-shell.
Just reading this passage got me so “infuriated” I had to stop writing. This is a mythological apparition.
Valentine’s Day?
I still don’t get it. It’s not like Valentine’s Day is Christmas. I mean Christmas is the grand daddy of days, right. The birth of Christ, a time for saint nick shove his big rear end down a chimney. It’s presents and trees and Fa La La La.
Thanksgiving. I get it. Turkeys and family and loosening the top button on your pants while watching the Lions get their asses kicked at the SilverDome yet again.
Easter, again a no-brainer. The resurrection, the cross, the egg hunts, a time for redemption and renewed spiritual commitment.
But Valentines Day? Really? Who says? Was the son of god born on this day? Did reindeer fly around a candy heart on this day? Did Jesus die on a chocolate cross for your sins on this day? No.
Did HERSHEY’s fill a heart shaped box on this day and promote it as a must have, must sell sexual elixir? As Sara Palin would say, “you betcha”
“Valentines day is a sham created by greeting card and chocolate company’s to, “reinforce and exploit gender stereotypes” as Liz Lemmon on 30 Rock so decidely declared this week.
I’m not sure I could sum it up any better than that.
February 14th is a day conjured out of thin air by Hallmark. Did cupid die on February 14th? Was Cupid born on February 14th? Did Cupid get shot in his own heart on February 14th. No. Who the hell is cupid and why even care? Isn’t he a toddler with a diaper and wings. I say burp the kid and put him to bed.
February 14th is a dart in the calendar thrown by Mr. Hallmark and Mr. Hershey’s Chocolate. It’s a strategic date between New Years and St Patrick’s Day, when little is happening outside Black History month, and last time I checked, Rosa Parks go to the back of the bus cards were not selling all that well.
Hallmark is a multi million dollar image and emotion churning machine that pumps out love and hearts and mush like so much toothpaste oozing out of the Colgate Toothpaste Factory.
364 days out of the year, it’s ok to be single. It’s ok to thrash around in the rip tide of dating insanity. But come Feb 14th, if you don’t have a significant other, you are chastised and cast into the pit of social stigma. “What you don’t have a date on Valentine’s Day,” some ignoramus will say.
Well to you single people on February 14th; I salute you. Being single means no pressure to, as Liz Lemmon says, “reinforce or exploit those accepted gender stereotypes.”
You have no pressure to make dinner reservations at the sold out bistro. You have no pressure to buy one rose, 12 roses, or a bouquet of crab grass. You have no pressure to purchase chocolates, or buy a gushy card. You have no pressure to be seen with a significant other in a club, bar, or popular night spot.
But you have just as much chance as getting lucky as the Valentine’s day fool who goes broke trying to outdo the next guy.
To Hallmark, I say take your caramel fudge and shove it where the sun don’t shine.
To Hershey’s, I say bend over and sit on your chocolate kiss.
Hey cupid shoot your arrow at someone else, because I all ready know that Valentines Day is a sham.
And that is crazy!