How to survive Valentines Day

In life you are one of two people: you either celebrate Valentine’s Day or you don’t.For those of you who do celebrate Valentine’s Day and are single, there is a rush and scramble to either find a date to share it with (irrespective of how much you like them) or to find a group of other like-minded single folk to act as an insurance policy against being on your own on a night that celebrates love and romance in all its forms.

Nightclubs and bars welcome these groups with open arms, and who knows, perhaps your date for next year’s Valentine’s Day is on the dancefloor…For other single people, mercifully unaffected by the pressure to feel they ought to be spending Valentine’s Day with someone else, it is just another night.For couples, Valentine’s Day is either a smorgasbord of everything soppy and cheesy about being in a couple, an excuse to spend the night together, or a dreaded occasion where the fact that you no longer like each other becomes unavoidable.

Restaurants, florists, chocolate makers and greeting card manufacturers love Valentine’s Day for its marketability and profit making capacity. Tables for two are booked all around the country ready to enjoy inflated prices of ordinary food with extraordinary ‘Valentine-themed’ names. Valentine’s Day roses and other flowers are snapped up and huge amounts of sugar and cocoa are consumed.

If you don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, consider it nothing but a marketing drive and money-spinner, feel resentful at being told when and how to celebrate the love of your life (“Why should I buy flowers for my wife when everyone else does?”) then you will find yourself in the minority…and possibly with a cross and offended wife.The origins of Valentine’s Day are religious (based on St. Valentine) and then romantic (from the courts of the Middle Ages). People have been marking this day with Valentine’s Day roses or confectionary for hundreds of years.
For what it’s worth, perhaps this time you’re better off following the crowd.