So, it’s that time of the year, once again. Valentine’s day is coming! Oh yes, I am so excited! … I will just sit safely under my umbrella, until the atmosphere goes back to normal.
This is the time when people get depressed if they don’t have a date (like it matters more that you are single now, than being single in any other day of the year) and also the time when social networks are flooded with pictures of the perfect couples, celebrating with perfect gifts, their perfect relationships. Because if you don’t post it and brag about it, it doesn’t exist, right?
Love is the most wonderful feeling humans are capable of experiencing. Considering this, there’s nothing more beautiful than celebrating the special bond you have with your life partner. What’s really wrong about the ‘month of love’ is that if you love someone so much, you shouldn’t need a designated day of the year to remind yourself about your true feelings.
Love should be celebrated every moment of everyday, all year round. The little gestures, love, the care for one another, special moments should be present in the life of a couple on a daily basis, not only on February 14th. If you spoil your significant other only when you ‘have to’ because it’s dictated by the social conventions, then the gesture has no real meaning whatsoever.
Commercial aspect of the holiday – Happy Stores
What’s so romantic about Valentine’s Day? We basically celebrate the day when a priest was martyred for secretly performing marriage ceremonies, around year 207. Taking joy in someone’s misfortune….That’s a bit gruesome, don’t you think? This unfortunate event was turned, in time, into a commercial holiday, which is spreading all over the world, making people buy stuff, in order to nurture such a pure feeling.
Besides, are we the ones who celebrate it, or the store owners do the celebrating part, as sales go up considerably during the ‘season of love’? I think the ones who are truly in love, in February, are the ones selling the love tokens.
And we celebrate the holiday by giving to our partner our heart, but not metaphorically, as initially intended, but literally, sort of, represented by a horribly large stuffed heart, with their name on it (in case they forget their name – useful in case of amnesia, I guess) or with a printed messages like ‘I love you‘ (in case they forget you love them, I suppose you can ask them to go look for the heart, and read the message again. Like this you don’t have to prove it anymore, as it’s already written down somewhere) or ‘Be mine‘ ( um … didn’t you guys agreed on this one prior to starting dating? – just saying).
The new trend is to give a custom-made heart shaped pillow to your partner, with your face printed on it… ?! … Let’s not even go there, as I don’t think WordPress allows bloggers to write about such aspects 🙂
We shouldn’t need plush hearts or heart-shaped anything for that matter, in order to prove our love to someone. And we definitely don’t need to prove our love to someone, on a specific day in a year. The real love token is found in your daily actions, and the real gifts come from our hearts. Nothing should be more precious than the gift of spending one more day together, loving and supporting each other, with every step taken into the world.
So, if your significant other is there, go and prove your love to them everyday, through every single one of your actions. Don’t wait for a day designated by society, in order to prove your feelings to someone, in front of the whole world. The events from behind the closed doors are more important than what we show to the world.
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyday!
All Right Choices 
Great post, Lucy — captures the truest essence of love and honor. 🙂
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Thank you so much for reading and for your lovely comment! I really don’t like to see how couples celebrate their love only once/year, on a day established by society. And it’s all about buying … Buying things and love just don’t belong together in my book. Have a lovely day! x
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Agree with your words totally. We celebrate every day that we are both on this side of the grass, pretty much ignoring all holidays. That said, when I was at the grocery store yesterday, there was a rather rough-looking gentleman coming out as I arrived at the door. He had two pots of pink tulips in his cart and a very contented and pleased look on his face. I could read that he was thinking how pleased the recipient of those pretty posies was going to be. It made me happy to see his joy!
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Thank you so much for your beautiful comment. You made me smile, knowing there are such beautiful couples out there. The best feeling in the world is to celebrate your love on a daily basis. I’m sure the gentleman buying flowers was quite something to see 🙂 Have a lovely day! x
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I’m with you on that. Still, it’s nice to ramp it up one day a year. About all I do, though, is remember to tell my sweetie he’s my Valentine!
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That’s very sweet, especially if you make your significant other feel like your Valentine all year round 🙂 It’s beautiful to see people celebrate their feelings, but I’ve also seen couples breaking up over not being pleased with their gifts… That just makes me sad, and it’s so silly and unnecessary. Thank you for reading! Hugs
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This is exactly what I feel! I am glad I am not the only one. Really well said 🙂
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Hah, I knew you will agree with me on this one 🙂 . Cheers to everyday celebration of love! Thank you for reading. Hugs
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I loved this post so much! It really made me think about Feb 14th in a much more cynical ‘grumpy cat’ way hehe. It’s yet another example of calendar days that have been hi-jacked for consumerist and completely shallow ends, when in reality every day can be the LOVE DAY, give love every day and it will come backto you like a boomerang!
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Thank you so much for your lovely comment! Haha, I don’t want to be the grumpy cat around here, but as you said, love day should be everyday, not on a specific day. I know some feel totally different about the holiday, but it seems to me like a total waste of time. But hey, if everyone does it…? 🙂
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Yes it is exclusive too, all this bullshit about it being a couples thing makes me annoyed. There are so many different types of love relationships, not just romantic love for those lucky enough to find it.
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I don’t think anyone should wash their dirty laundry in public. Who we date is completely our problem and shouldn’t be advertise all over the internet. But I know couples who broke up because one of them didn’t wanted to post a picture of the couple on Facebook….it’s just dumb and unnecessary. As soon as you need to show off your gifts and special moments, I wonder about the truthfulness of what’s posted. If your special moments are so rare that you have to post them online, I very much pity you as a couple, and I hope they have a life as good as pretended in those pictures. When I am with someone, I try to have special moments everyday, so posting every little gesture somewhere, seems like waste of energy, and besides, it only concerns the couple, not someone else. But hey, maybe I am old school 🙂 Have a lovely day! x
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I totally agree with you. My boyfriend works in IT and he’s paranoid about social sharing, he refused for 3 years to even say he was in a relationship with me on facebook and my friends thought I made him up and he was invisible bwahah. But he is the most loveliest person and we share these amazing moments every day together, absolutely nothing shared with anyone, but a big database of photos and mementos that we occasionally revisit. It seems far more sacred that way. You are not old school at all, I understand. I think sharing things on social media sort of cheapens it as it is put out there and people have their opinions of you and your life. Many blessings xx
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Thank you so much for this! Your story is so beautiful. I can totally relate with you guys on this one. It feels like the normal way to go about being a couple. Same thing for me, putting it out there, makes it look cheap and fake. I’m happy to see people like you still exist out there. Gives me a bit of home 🙂 Many hugs xo
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Thank you lady, warm hugs back at you. You’ve inspired me to write a post on the damage of social sharing for your romantic life and why keeping quiet is actually more empowering in the long run, will make mention of your post in there too.
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I am very happy to hear this! 🙂 I always say: if i make a person smile with what I write or I inspire someone on the way, my mission is accomplished! Looking forward to reading your post. Have a lovely day! xo
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Woohoo, thanks and you too enjoy your day. My post comes out on the 14th and I have linked to your article in it so you should get a head’s up. mwah xx
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Great, looking forward to it!! Mwah xo
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Excellent post Lucy and I quite agree with you Valentine’s Day has become another commercial circus and why people have to post declarations of undying love on social media is beyond me. Have a lovely weekend 🙂
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I can’t agree more with you. The social media bit leaves me clueless all the time. It seems like it’s not real until you show it to everyone. Such a pity. Thank you so much for reading and for your lovely comment. Hugs! ❤
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Yes exactly it’s like it can’t be love unless you’ve told someone you “love them to the moon and back” on facebook whatever that means! I’ve also observed that the more over the top the declarations are the less secure the relationship ( and the person) is!! Virtual hugs to you too! 😃
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Very well said! Indeed, the people who go over the top with the declarations are the ones who are the most insecure. Also, some do it in order to keep the appearance of the perfect couple out there. I don’t understand why bragging is such a big deal, when actually, the real feelings is what really matter. And when feelings are there, the last thing I care is showing others how it feels for me. Such a beautiful, pure feeling, thrown in the dirt by so many… Thank you once again for your wonderful words! Have a lovely Sunday! Many hugs back at you! x
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Isn’t it is little ironical that when the emotion of love should have been such an integral part of our daily life, but with our daily grid it has lost its way and we have to dedicate a day to express our emotion of love…
Romancing is not limited between two individuals, but romance can extend beyond and we can romance with anything from writing to travelling to eating…anything we are passionate about.
But today the pure love and romance has been eclipsed by the play of materialistic gift…it needs a rethink…
Love the post…can be great to have to many more days in a year rather than limiting our celebration to only one day in a year…
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Thank you so much for reading and for your lovely comment! I can’t agree more with you. This is exactly what I find sad about the holiday. We celebrate a feeling we can’t buy, by buying things, and not by being there for our significant other, all year round. The idea of having a day to celebrate our love doesn’t make any sense to me. As you said, love extends further than just between two individuals, and should be celebrated constantly, out of heart, not custom set by society. Have a lovely weekend!
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It is all about finding some quality time and reflecting on such practices and traditions…many times we miss the essence for which a tradition was started and we just do it out of compulsion and many times just be part of the activity…the moment we start questioning the assumptions, we start seeing new avenues and outlets to celebrate our existence…
Thanks and you too have a great weekend.
😀
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Once again, thank you for your amazing comment. Indeed, most people celebrate it, because everybody does it, even if it has no meaning to them. It’s nothing wrong in borrowing what’s beautiful from other cultures, but the whole economical and social wrapping around it, bothers me a lot. It’s all so fake, and meant to advertise false perfect relationships.
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Yes you are right…I also agree it is good to take good ideas and practices from different part of the world…sharing and caring is what makes the society more engaging and more progressive.
Yeah, the tag of money and material to such pious feeling takes away the essence and message in it.
Truth and honesty in anything makes it such a potent force, unfortunately it is today grossly missing…relationships magnifies with humility and humbleness and gift is just incidental…
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Absolutely beautiful writing! Thank you so much. Your comments are wonderful to read. You totally got it right. We absolutely lost the essence of the message behind inspiring from other cultures and celebrating our love, in our rush to turn it into a commercial event…
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Things in life goes in cycle and in circles…nothing is permanent, so are emotions and our thinking…it keep changing and from one age to other, from one stage to the another…trends keep coming and going…
It is the cycle of time that defines our life and living…
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I understand, and I share this view. But it’s the same for Father’s day, grand mother’s day, mother’s day, xmas, etc etc….these are also social conventions.I wonder if people who despise valentine’s day also despise these other commercial celebrations 🙂
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Thank you for reading and for taking the time to leave a comment! I don’t know about Father’s day and the others, as we don’t celebrate them here. But we do celebrate xmas, and indeed, this also became way too commercial. I guess it’s like this with all holidays. It’s all about expensive gifts and not about spending time with family and friends, as it used to be a while back…such a pity. x
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We should definitely give and receive love all year around and not just wait for a day to do it. It’s nice to have a day to celebrate love, but we shouldn’t wait for it in order to express our love to the loved one 🙂
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Thank you for reading! That’s exactly the message of the post. Too many people celebrate love only on this specific day, because social conventions dictate so. It’s such a pity, as you definitely don’t need anyone to remind you how much you love your life partner. x
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