Valentine’s Day has two sides: gifting out of love and companies to make a little extra money around the holiday.
While many people enjoy Valentine’s Day, most can attest that people commonly feel excluded during this holiday.
Valentine’s Day started as a Christian feast day to honor a martyr named Valentine.
Although this doesn’t seem very romantic, the start of gift-giving on this holiday began because author Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a poem romanticizing the holiday.
Over time, what started as a Christian holiday has evolved into a fun time of the season filled with many business opportunities.
One of the biggest issues people have with the holiday is the pressure to give gifts and how it makes people feel obligated to give expensive gifts and rush into relationships to avoid feeling left out.
“While I appreciate the intentionality that a designated date brings to expressing love, I also recognize that Valentine’s Day is a consumer-driven holiday designed to sell overpriced goods,” said Mrs. Saari. “For that reason, Mr. Saari and I choose to opt out. Instead, we prefer to commit to loving each other intentionally every day of the year, albeit sometimes unsuccessfully. I hope everyone finds—and strives to be—a person who loves like 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, not just on Valentine’s Day.”
This social pressure enforces the need to go out and spend a ton of money on unnecessary things, making it seem like a business-driven event rather than a true celebration of love.
“Valentine’s Day to me is a consumer holiday. It drives people in relationships to buy gifts for each other and can make people feel bad who aren’t in relationships and who recently got out of a relationship. So I think the world would be a better place without the holiday,” said Mr. Saari.
However, there is a more genuine side to it, although Valentine’s Day is overly commercialized, it is still a meaningful opportunity for couples and friends to express love and treat each other with small gifts.
“Valentine’s Day isn’t really a consumer holiday. I think that it has a big meaning behind it and that it’s not just done for financial purposes,” said Mr. Bryant.
The best way to spend Valentine’s Day is by telling those that are close to you how much you love them.
