A day of luurve (Valentine's Day)

Member Name: low_rider

Product:	Valentine's Day
Date:	15/02/09 (60 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A whole lotta love

Disadvantages: A (w)hole in your pocket

I hope this doesn't come as a shock to you, but Valentine's Day 2009 has been and gone. If this has come as a shock to you, then that might well explain why your partner has been in such a bad mood all day and is refusing to talk to you.

Valentine's Day is officially of the feast day of two Saint Valentines; Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni. A feast day is a day in the Christian calendar when a particular saint is honoured; every day is, in fact, a Saint's Day (there are a couple of exceptions, but that isn't important). The ones we tend to remember are the ones that are mostly celebrated for secular reasons. Christmas, as the mass of Christ, is for many merely an orgy of consumerism; St Patrick's day is an orgy of drinking, and St Valentine's day is an orgy (perhaps the wrong word in the context) of loving.

There doesn't seem to be any reason why the two Valentines who are honoured on this day are associated with love - there is a story that Valentine of Rome fell foul of the Emperor Claudius by performing illegal marriage ceremonies for couples (young men at the time were forbidden to marry, so the story goes, in order that they would go into the army instead), and when discovered, was martyred. The legend tells us that he was responsible for writing the first Valentine, by sending a message (whilst in prison awaiting execution) to either the woman he loved or the daughter of the jailor - or both, as in some tellings they are the same woman.

However, sweet as this story is, it appears to be a later fabrication. The traditions of Valentine's Day largely evolved into their common form during Chaucer's time (late 1300s), when for the first time Valentine became linked with love, and sending tokens of love (Valentines) was established as a practice in the world of courtly amour. Fast forward a few hundred years, and you have Valentine's Day in its present form.

It is estimated that one billion Valentine's cards are sent worldwide - it is the second biggest card-sending holiday behind Christmas. Millions of pounds in Britain alone are spent on flowers, and it is the busiest night of the year for restaurants, with many being booked up months in advance. It is a far cry from exchanging love-notes; it is full on consumerist heaven, and the retailers are happy to take our money - in the run-up to Valentine's day, a dozen red roses will effectively double in price, restaurants will issue special "Valentine's menus" at higher than usual costs and street vendors lurk everywhere, ready to pounce on you with must-have tat to buy to give to your partner, such as teddy bears with the words" I Wuv U" emblazoned on them.

It is also the time for these apocryphal tales about the ultimate man to surface - you know, the ones where men have gone to absolutely impossible romantic lengths for their love, such as the man who took his girlfriend on a champagne hot-air balloon ride that drifted, at sunset, over a field where he had arranged the hay-bales to spell out "MARRY ME". All men find these tales intensely annoying, as you know that you can't do anything like that and it promotes an impossible standard. We do the best we can, but there is always someone who is willing to do something ridiculous. All men hate those stories.

On the other hand, there seems to be a trend for younger women (I'm thinking 13-16 here) to buy their boyfriends a cute, cuddly teddybear for Valentine's. Just because you think it would make a really sweet love token does not mean that your boyfriend would. After all, he can't get rid of it, as it was a gift from you, but it isn't something he particularly wants and he will worry about how it will look to his mates if they come round to visit.

Then you have to wade through all the tacky greeting cards with those horrible, horrible "poems" (just because it has rhyming couplets don't make it a work of art), and those weird bouquets of flowers with strange heart shaped balloons improbably placed next to the roses. The long-stemmed, thorny roses.

You might think, reading this, that I am a sad, bitter, grumpy old man all alone in the world with nothing better to do than gripe about Valentine's Day. Nothing can be further from the truth. I am engaged, I am 21 (although, in fairness, I do look 35 - damn premature balding!), and whilst I may be a bit grumpy I am certainly not bitter, and I actually quite enjoy Valentine's day.

After all, it is a time for being together, a time when you don't need to be ashamed of being in love. It is a day traditionally associated with the war between couples and singles - but then again, if you are in a couple then you have a great time with your partner, and most of my single friends made plans with each other either in groups or couples to go and do something together.

We are all too often told that things are getting worse, that there is less love and trust in the world, but when I went out into town with my partner for a nice lunch, a trip to the art gallery and a general look around I didn't see any of that. All over I saw people smiling, happy, holding hands, and I saw people smiling because they saw other people smiling. And, believe it or not, that made me smile.

I don't support the commercialisation of the day. I don't think it is right to merely go into the supermarket, pick the first mass-produced card you see and the closest uniformly arranged bunch of flowers and the box of chocolates placed strategically close to the till and give them to your partner - if you do that, then it suggests you don't know them very well. Instead, I think we should try to do something different - for my partner, I arranged her own bouquet of flowers, and planned to take her out to the art gallery, which I knew she wanted to visit but we had never gone before. I also bought her a fairtrade bracelet as a surprise, which I gave to her when she was asking me what she should wear. I'm not saying this to show off, because I don't think that this was out of the reach of anyone. Instead, I think it is a time for thoughtfulness, a time to get to know your partner or even get to know your friends. It is a time to be selfless - and what better excuse than Valentine's Day.

Because I often like to end my reviews on a light note, I want to end by saying don't take Valentine's Day too seriously, and remember that even the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. To demonstrate this, I remember reading in the paper a few years ago the day after Valentine's Day that Jamie Oliver had been hospitalized on February 14th with nasty burns to a rather sensitive particularly masculine area. Kinky sex play, one might assume - but no. As a surprise for his wife, the Naked Chef decided to cook a meal for her in the buff. Unfortunately, a hot fat incident occurred. So when planning your perfect, romantic Valentine's Day, do have a think through the logistics.

Summary: Don't forget the meaning