With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, people are hustling to buy flowers and boxes of chocolate for the ones they are going to ask to “be mine.” Many people have a disdain for Valentine’s Day and everything it stands for; however, I think that it is a holiday that should remain celebrated and cherished for what it does for our society.
Many people think that this holiday, which is filled with various hues of pink and red and heart-shaped everything, is meant to be celebrated with your significant other and that it is only a holiday for those with a partner. However, I think that Valentine’s Day is vital for us to recognize the importance of love.
It is important to know the history before you understand the importance of the holiday. Valentine’s Day originated as a Roman holiday that transformed into a celebration of the legend of St. Valentine, then ultimately turned into what it is today.
According to History.com, this holiday’s name originated with a priest, St. Valentine, who performed wedding ceremonies during a time when marriage was outlawed for soldiers, but he continued to marry young lovers despite the ramifications.
Since the beginning, Valentine’s Day has been a celebration of love and its necessity despite the possible consequences. However, not everyone has a significant other that they will be spending this heartfelt holiday with. Why continue to celebrate it when it originated with marriage and the celebration of lovers when you may not have one? That is a great point. I think that Valentine’s Day has developed into a holiday that celebrates the love between anyone, not just lovers.
“I think it’s a cute holiday,” said Emily Granier, a sophomore environmental science major. “If you have a boyfriend, you can do fun things with him, but you can also do cute little things with all your girlfriends.”
This holiday does not have to just be celebrated with a partner. Anyone can be your valentine. It can be your beloved, but it could also be friends, family, your dog or your cat. Valentine’s Day is about taking a day to be with ones you love and letting them know you love them. Love is not constrained to just a significant other, so why would your valentine be?
However, my main issue with Valentine’s Day is with the fact that it is a holiday centered around just one day letting someone know you love them. Why not let the people you love know that you love them every day? This could be a valid point, but I think that we want to use that as an excuse to not celebrate this day because it seems so artificial, with all the delicate decorations, sensational sweets and candle-lit dinners.
However, the sad truth is we often forget to tell or show the ones we love just how much we love them and do not tell our companions that we love them every single day. We often think, “Oh, they know I love them. They have to. I tell them every day. Don’t I?” The reality is that we often do not.
“We’ve become more involved with technology which has distanced us from basic human contact and connection,” said Daniela Cadena, a staff member at Buzzfeed.
We are often too focused on our daily lives and technology or basic distractions to be so focused on our contact with our loved ones. We need to have a day dedicated to reconnecting with our people. Valentine’s Day is a day celebrated to be more socially involved with the people that matter most.
Love is something that has been around forever. It has been studied and is a popular topic among various philosophers, scientists and psychologists. It has been seen over and over in history, literature and pop culture. This word, “love,” is universally used yet extremely difficult to define.
“Love is a powerful, complex emotional experience that involves changes in your body chemistry, including your neurotransmitters (brain chemicals),” said the staff at Psych Central, a mental health information and news website. “It impacts your social relationships in varied ways, affecting how you relate to others around you.”
Often, when we think of love, we think solely of romantic love. However, there are several types of love that all have the same depth and intimacy but are displayed in different ways. There is love between friends, love of family and, of course, romantic love. Although there are different kinds of love, any kind of love holds power over its captivators, and when expressed, it can impact individual lives and our society in a positive way.
Whether it is a significant other, best friend or silly sibling, love is a powerful tool that can be used to connect us with each other. This Valentine’s Day, take the time to slow down, put down the electronics and look past all the assumptions that you have to have a partner to celebrate this day, and let the ones you love know just how special they are to you.
