As the holiday of love and romance rolls around, certain people like myself dread this time of year.

Although the color scheme is cute, and the gifts are nice, there shouldn’t have to be a specific day to show love. That’s why Valentine’s Day is the worst holiday ever created. 

As young children, we would look forward to making valentines for our classmates, passing them out and receiving them. Passing out the candy and cards brought anxiety to some due to the pressure of going one at a time. The cards you’d pass out would have Disney characters, monster trucks, cute dogs or even just fun colors. The cards would include red heart lollipops that would melt before they got to our mouths. scratch-and-sniff stickers that would all smell like a mix of plastic and sugar. We learned that Valentine’s Day isn’t just about relationships and that it was more about friends.

I began to realize that Valentine’s Day is really about relationships and love, rather than friends. Once you got into middle school, however, Valentine’s Day became directed towards specific groups or people. I began to realize that Valentine’s Day is really about relationships and love, rather than just friends. My friends would only get gifts or get appreciated if they had a significant other on the day. Middle schools, like Lamar, would do a yearly tradition of selling carnations. It brought the idea in your head that if you didn’t get a carnation you were less appreciated. 

Another reason I dislike Valentine’s Day is the cost. The gifts can get very expensive very fast. If your partner decides they want a nice necklace, that can be run $60 or more. A dozen roses cost at least $20. Once you decide on the perfect gift, it will later get forgotten about over time. Flowers die after one or two weeks. Chocolates get eaten. Stuffed animals are given away, and jewelry rusts. Everyone’s dream is to have a giant teddy bear. How would you feel about paying $240 for it?

You would think having a valentine changes the perspective of the holiday, but the stress of picking out the perfect present makes it even worse. The day consists of extremely high expectations that you would think could help your relationship, but instead it harms it. Some couples decide to go to a fancy dinner instead of getting each other gifts. This also causes far too much planning and money for one simple night. As couples go on Valentine’s dates, their pictures flood your social media, which then could put you in denial about your own relationship. Not only can it put you in denial, but it can also make you uncomfortable. The classic relationship posts include kissing and hugging, which you may not be comfortable seeing.

The holiday didn’t start this way, but it wasn’t exactly cupids and candy hearts either. The origin of Valentine’s Day comes from St. Valentine in the 14th century. It used to be a tradition to cut goats into strips and dip them in their blood, then slap women with the strips to supposedly make women fertile for the upcoming year. That is how the traditional color of love—red—came to mind. Emperor Claudius II of Rome executed two different men named Valentine on Feb. 14 during the third century, which is where the name “Valentine” comes from. 

How did these grisly traditions turn into the holiday of love? The day became associated with romantic love when notions of courtly love flourished by association with the “lovebirds” of early spring. But though the meaning of the holiday is now different from its origin, I feel the bleak emotion surrounding it remains the same.

The holiday truly brings so much negative energy into people’s lives. There couldn’t be a more ignorant holiday consisting of all of the specific aspects going into it. What should we do about it?

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