Mama Bear Moxie: Be still my cynical heart

I don’t like Valentine’s Day. Every year the holiday comes around, and I can’t help but feel rebellious in my feelings about it.

So, just in case there is anyone else out there like me, here are the reasons why I am not crazy about Valentine’s Day:

No. 1: The marketing

I am not a fan of feeling like I have to purchase something for my spouse on Valentine’s Day. The cheap schemes to buy more to show love is just wrong. I am not going to buy my husband a box of chocolates just because I feel that I am supposed to. In the same way, I don’t want my husband to buy me a dozen roses just because he feels he has to. I would rather he buy roses for me at a totally random time when I have had a hard week. And that’s even if I like roses to begin with. I feel much more loved if my husband randomly gets me something.

No. 2: The dinner reservations

My husband and I have participated in going out to dinner on Valentine’s Day occasionally. There is something that always makes me feel weird about it though. What part of flocking to a restaurant, on a night when a lot of other people will be doing the same thing, and sharing a meal with my love surrounded by a room packed with strangers sounds good? The idea of going out to dinner is to enjoy some great food and share some conversation with the person across the table from you, but it can be very hard to do so in a packed restaurant where servers are frantically running around trying to serve gobs of people.

No. 3: One day focus

We talk about love languages a lot in our household. Just the other night, I told my husband that I feel loved when he does the dishes or some other chore that is part of my daily routine. He feels love when I tell him how much he means to me. I don’t buy into the idea that Feb. 14 should be the one day I do something special to show my love. If you are in a relationship, your love should be shown multiple times a week in small ways. The fact that this random day was chosen as the pinnacle of focus in our society just baffles me.

No. 4: School valentines

I am not a fan of extra candy. We just finished coming down from the Christmas high of extra sweets only to be bombarded with Valentine’s Day candy? Getting valentines for your classmates is something that I have fond memories. I remember picking out cards for certain people and making sure not to use the word love on any of the valentines that were going to the boys in my class. Nowadays, some kids don’t even write the names of their classmates on the valentines anymore. In an effort to save time, the giver just scribbles their name and then drops their treat onto random desks of classmates. There is no actual connection between showing care for someone when you aren’t even going to write their name down.

I know that I am part of the minority when it comes to Valentine’s Day.Maybe I am just a rebel at heart and don’t want to be forced to purchase things and act a certain way just because society says so. Love should be actively celebrated and shown throughout the entire year and not just on a random day in the middle of February.