valentine's day

and here's my column that will be out this friday, sort of a post-mortem view of valentine's day.
enjoy!

CARPE DIEM 2-15

So here we are once again, on the ass-end of the winter holiday season. Long gone is the quiet dignity of Thanksgiving, where you can drink and eat and squabble with your family more in one afternoon than you might over an entire normal weekend. Also long past is the consumerific splendor of Christmas, the tacky rhinestone and LED sweaters packed away, the gift receipts long ago cashed in. Even drunken New Years’ seems a distant memory--though the acidic, gritty taste of revisited Jager probably still lingers for some.

And by the time this reaches you, even the Valentine’s Day “holiday” will be over, resulting no doubt in joy for some, ruined credit ratings for others, and perhaps even tears.

And why not? With the ridiculous expectations placed upon people for this, the most nakedly commercial holiday we celebrate—at least Christmas has some underlying higher theme besides “Buy Shit For Your Girl, Because We Said So, or She’ll Kick Your Ass”—how could anyone ever hope to get it right?

The diamond companies are certainly hoping that a slice of the clueless male demographic (that is, all of us) will be desperate enough for approval that they will shell out hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Add cards, flowers, dining, and other entertainment, and we’re talking about a holiday celebrating “love” that rang up nearly $17 billion dollars last year alone, according to diamondvues.com, a diamond industry website.

That’s a helluva price tag. Do we get breakfast in bed afterwards? How about a kiss on the mouth?

It’s been a long, strange trip getting here, too. We’ve all heard the legends of Saint Valentine—there were actually at least two or three martyrs named Valentine or Valentinus—but the stories are so sketchy that in 1969 the Roman Catholic Calendar of Saints removed the feast of Saint Valentine, saying that too little was known about him. Other than he died on February 14.

His wife probably killed him when he showed up at home that night empty-handed.

Scholars even disagree as to whether the earliest mid-February celebrations were meant to celebrate romantic love or fertility. For instance, it’s probably not a coincidence that the Romans, and even pre-Roman societies celebrated Lupercalia on February 15, a fertility rite that involved sacrificing goats and a dog, a feast, and naked nobility running around in the streets whacking people with strips of skin cut from the sacrificed animals, that were meant to ensure an easy childbirth.

Those kooky Romans.

At any rate, this alleged holiday has morphed quite a bit into the way it is celebrated today. We can blame one Esther Howland for popularizing the exchange of Valentine’s Day cards in this country. In 1847, Howland, the daughter of a bookstore owner became the first to mass-produce and sell Valentine’s Day cards. Beginning in 2001, the greeting card industry has been giving out an annual “Esther Howland Award for Greeting Card Visionary.”

Gosh, thanks a ton, Esther. If there is any justice at all, she’s slowly turning on an arrow jammed through her heart, roasting over a super-heated vat of rich, dark chocolate.

The point of all this is not to deride love, or those who are in love. Cynical as I may sound, I believe in love. I happen to believe it is different for everybody. Much like the concept of God, perhaps “love” is too abstract, enormous, mysterious, and fraught with baggage to be reduced to a meaningful soundbite. It certainly won’t be given useful meaning through the cynical machinations of industries that are designed to capitalize on another complex human emotion—guilt.

Lots of people have diamonds. I’d venture to guess that not many of them have love.

Which is more important?

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