Valentine's Day (I'm Not Sickeningly Peppy In Real Life, You Know)

Sometimes I feel like this blog veers to the optimistic a bit too hard, just because that's kind of the point. In real life, I frequently say things like "people are crazy" or express disapproval at ideology or do a lot of other things that probably aren't strictly in the Geeky Humanist Pro-People Optimism Canon, you know? I have a problem with cynicism in general, but that doesn't mean I'm wholly cleansed of it.

I say these things because it's Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day is one of two things. Either you go out to dinner and buy chocolates and put your mouth on people, or you post passive-aggressive Facebook statuses where you rechristen it Single's Awareness Day or disparage it. The two groups generally don't intersect on any given Valentine's Day, but from year to year a lot of people will pass from one group into another and back, in a sine wave of periodic cynicism.

Honestly, I don't care about Valentine's Day. I say this as someone whose Valentine's Days are almost always spent single. (Although I should probably come out and say that this is not currently true. Maybe next year I'll make a blog post rebutting this one--though I hope not.) I never really had all that much trouble ignoring it. I hate to pull the "well, you only x because y" thing, but I can't help but feel like the Valentine's-haters are just a tad bitter. No offense, guys. Being single on Valentine's Day should be like being Jewish at Christmas--sure, you don't participate yourself, but (generally) you don't get all bent up about seeing trees everywhere. (I never made a War on Christmas post, but rest assured that this analogy doesn't imply I'm anti-Happy-Holidays. Man, this paragraph has a lot of parenthetical sentences.)

I also see a lot of accusation that Valentine's Day is a "manufactured" holiday. Guys? All holidays are manufactured. If there was a Jesus, he wasn't born on December 25, and he didn't die on the first Friday after the first full moon after the equinox or however that works. They're just days that happened to be picked out. Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc. At one point, maybe they were associated with particular times of the year or past events, but that doesn't make all subsequent days with the same calendar designation special. They're just days with a bit of mythology thrown in, and we build an edifice around them. Sure, greeting card companies fuel the process, but there was a holiday before them, and nobody makes you buy a greeting card. Personally, I made one out of a Dinosaur Comic. It's not wrong to participate in a social construct just because someone's profiting off of it.

So, in conclusion, if you're in a relationship, feel free to enjoy Valentine's Day. There's no shame in it. If you're not, then remember, you get Discount Chocolate Day, February 15th. To everyone who doesn't give a shit, feel free to not give a shit--but there's no need to let us know.