Does anyone REALLY care about this holiday?

I stopped caring about this holiday in Kindergarten when it broke my fingers.

Card companies, candy manufacturers, and florists
</cynic>

I don’t care about it, for the record.

Just a good reason to drink Alcohol during the week

I do, since it’s my birthday today actually :D

@smart; happy birthday. I have a b’day on a national holiday (Dec. 31) and that is not fun. Hope your day is enjoyable.

Ambivalence

I just don’t like it cause it’s expected that you do something for your girlfriend/wife.. Its more fun when you do something thats unexpected

My girlfriend cares…

I agree with Fallstand. It really doesn’t mean as much because your expected to do it like say get flowers for instance where im betting those same flowers would mean a lot more to her if you gave them to her out of the blue.

I think the popularization of valentine’s day in the US was a major coup by the greeting card companies. I dislike it when any corporation uses social engineering to make a profit….(like the DeBeers company socially engineering people to crave diamonds). @Fallstand and uberbaman…I agree expressions of affection are more meaningful when they arise from someone’s desire to do something nice…rather than social expectation.

Valentine’s is not a holiday here, yes guys we have to work on this one. Of course it’s not the only day we are set up to fail, birthday, Christmas, Anniversary sometimes more than one kind.

Although it does sometimes mean more when we do something romantic out of the blue, this day requires us to do more than just buy flowers. It forces us to really think what the love of our life is craving. Since, what will make one happy isn’t what will make another happy.

We each need to get to know that person in our life, whom we claim to love. We need express our love in a way that demonstrates that we are actually getting closer and more intimate. Yes it is forced because it’s a deadline but if you can show that your getting to know them it means a lot to them. And when we’re successful it makes us feel good too.

Les sorry about your fingers man, ouch

I think it is fun, I am an elementary school teacher and it gives us a break right before our standardized testing session. The kids really love it——it is a happy day in primary school!

The fun of this holiday for me has been finding things all year long that I think my children would like, or find surprising and nice, for valentines. It’s the giving part that has been so good.

Don’t care here. Do resent the assumed obligation more than I appreciate the sentiment. Am slightly cynical about it being a corporate tradition.

I disliked V day in elementary school because they had a “you have to send them to everyone or no one” rule, and that meant a lot of cards to prepare, and I really didn’t want to send them to some people. It’s my first memory of my procrastination pathology, too.

However this year I received perhaps the best such card I’ve ever had… but it was a few days early. ;-P

Thanks gailcalled :D

I’m surprised. The balance of responses is definitely in the negative camp. For my part, it seems like, of all the things in the world, Love deserves a special day of focus. To me, it is more important than Presidents, Columbus, and a bunch of other “holidays”. Don’t get me wrong, greeting card companies etc., the commercialism and compulsory nature of it. All lame.

But it’s LOVE people! Feel the love! I ignore all the card stuff, and the “standard” things like flowers, or giving things/cards to lots of people. Celebrate the love! That’s all that counts!

@Mangus: except that Valentine’s Day as currently practiced is not about love in the slightest. It’s entirely about conspicuous spendy displays of materialism that allegedly demonstrate romantic love.

I have fond memories of making Valentine’s Boxes with my mom in grade school…we made one once that I thought was SOOO beautiful, it had lots of red glitter and heart-shaped doilies glued to it, ha ha. I kept it for years.

Mostly this holiday is kind of sucky, I think, for the above-stated reasons. But I like getting chocolate from people.

@Mangus: I agree with you about love. You have a great attitude towards it, and if we all had that attitude, it’d be wonderful. Like cwilbur (and you too, it sounds like), I think the V day ritual of expected offerings tends to interfere with the love part, and sadly many of us aren’t managing to make it all about love. I’ll try to do better by your example, though. I imagine that mone of us want cynicism day, or at least, not in the place of a love day. Thanks.