Unless you are blind, deaf, and dumb you probably noticed that yesterday was the day that most every single person in western civilization loathes: Valentine's Day.
The holiday started off as a Catholic feast for Saint Valentine. Apparently, the priest was hanging out in Rome and praising Jesus, when the emperor got pissed and told him to either stop converting Romans to Christianity or be beaten to death and beheaded, for good measure. (IDIOT DISCLAIMER: this is a gross simplification. If you take it seriously, you're stupid.)
Valentine said no, and was promptly bludgeoned and relieved of his dome-piece. Such a romantic story!
Geoffrey Chaucer (that guy who wrote the Canterbury Tales which you spark-noted in high school) provides us with the first account of Valentine's being a romantic holiday, when he associated the day with mating birds in a 1382 poem.
How fitting for it all to begin with chicks having sex.
What we know as Valentine's Day, though, really didn't start with any religious piety or birds pleasuring each other, but with the Industrial Revolution. See, back in the late 1700's, factories began producing premade cards with verses in them.
They were dubbed "mechanical valentines," and with the increasing efficiency of postage it became easy to send out a bunch of impersonal bits of paper. This tradition has continued on, and been expanded on infinitely.
Many of those companies that have weaseled their way into "love" made their moves on Valentine's Day. Jewelers, candy manufacturers, and various sex toy companies have co-opted the holiday as their own.
V-Day is the pinnacle of commercializing a holiday and emotion, which continued with every other holiday like Christmas and Easter.
Companies now use it as a free advertising tool to get people to buy their lovers or prospective lovers a nice diamond necklace, or a night out at a fancy restaurant that you can't afford. It's completely an engine of materialism, not a celebration of love.
In a way it does have it's advantages when looked at through that light. Maybe it's just nice that by buying things you're supporting local businesses. Kind of like a yearly stimulus package for the area you live in.
Certainly every Feb. 13 gives local florists a huge shot in the arm from guys that waited until the last minute to prove to their wives/girlfriends that they love them so much to hand them a big bouquet of cliché.
More than anything, V-Day is a way for dying relationships to resuscitate themselves for a little while longer. It lets couples fool each other into thinking that they're still okay.
If the only time you're romantic and sexy with your partner is on a snowy and ugly day in February, then you should probably have considered just getting out of the relationship and enjoying singleness with all the other singles on V-Day.
So, to those of you who are truly hopeless romantics (or those of you whipped into absolutely having to appease your lady with meaningless sacrifices to the god of un-thoughtful gifts) at least buy your wares, including the cherry flavored condoms, from a local vendor.
