Valentine’s – It’s a Date Whether You Like it or Not

It’s that time of year again.  Before the stores have even sold off and packed away the last remnants of Christmas the heart shaped doilies, naked baby angels armed with weapons, and proclamations of show thy love your love start invading the store shelves and are splashed across in-your-face displays.

Florists have the days already counted and tallied and marked on their calendars.  Counting backwards from February 14th one day longer than the longest living cut rose can survive and the flower prices leap into outer space.

It’s a highly commercialized so-called holiday that isn’t a holiday at all, created by card companies looking for a fat payday between Christmas and Mother’s day.  Ok, so that may be where the more recent trend came from, where you are vilified if you don’t spend hours picking out the perfect card to go with the $500 roses that cost $50 two weeks ago, chocolates, dinner, jewelry etc etc.

That’s not really where this madness began though.

In around the Middle Ages or so people paid homage to a (later sainted) priest named Valentine who defied the Roman Emperor Claudius II, a priest who continued performing marriages in secret despite the Emperor’s decree that no young men were allowed to marry.  Apparently not having a wife was supposed to make men better soldiers.  I don’t know about that. Spoils of war and all, I doubt many would turn down their spoils with the blood lust burning in their loins just because of the little missus waiting back at home that he might see in a few years if he makes it home alive.

Of course the Roman’s killed him for it.

Or it might be the other sainted Valentine (apparently there’s at least three), some guy who helped Christians escape the cruelty and torture of Roman prisons.  Jailed for his actions, he penned the first “valentine” note to his love before his death in the same prison he’d helped others escape from.

Of course, even back in the Middle Ages they borrowed from the past and their Valentine’s rituals were set around and taken in part from an earlier Pagan holiday – Lupercalia , a mid-February fertility festival.  Of course this was done in an effort to Christianize the Pagans and conform their beliefs to Christianity.

Ok, enough of the history crap.  The pressure is on and whether you like it or not you have a date with your significant other Feb 14^th.

Everyone feels the pressure to perform, to buy, and to take that one day to show their other half how much they appreciate them.

Some take it as a Do I Really Have To?  Others get downright hostile about it.  While others still sit moony eyed and waiting for their love to show them the love.

All in all it’s not so bad.  One day out of the year (not counting anniversaries) where you are reminded to show that other person in your life that they mean something more to you than, say, the couch.

It’s not like Christmas where you have to get second and third mortgages on the house and sell organs to come up with piles of money you can’t afford in order to avoid offending all your relatives, co-workers, etc.

Romance should not be mistaken with the size of your wallet.  If you can find something romantic and meaningful, you make for a happier relationship, may even get a little something, and are not out piles of money you don’t have.

Mostly we stopped bothering with all this stuff since the kids.  Oh, we still do the token cards and chocolates for each other and whatnot.  The kids take the cards for crafts and eat the chocolate, but it’s the effort that counts.

With the scarcity of babysitters and lack of family supports, tight finances, and kids that turn into crazed little apes acting up, fighting, and becoming extremely needy the moment they get the first whiff that mom and dad*might* have plans that do not include them, we’ve abandoned the idea of “dates” a long time ago.

Dates are numbers on a calendar.

This year we decided to do something different.  Don’t ask my why because it wasn’t my idea.  I’d rather stick to the let’s not bother and just hand off the token cards and chocolates thing than deal with the stress of juggling the hubby’s shift work, no spending money, and kids who are determined to never ever let mom and dad actually be a couple.

So, we’re trying the going out for Valentine’s thing.  It won’t be on the actual day, of course.  Shift work.  But we are going to try to sneak out for a few hours, maybe a late lunch or early dinner, maybe a movie instead, and pretend like we’re teenagers sneaking out on a quick date without the parents knowing, only the parents are the kids.