Love is more special than one day in February - a rather generic anti-Valentine message
I’m rather liking the rethink-V-day activism around this year, which has ended up being a bit more substantive than some of the Anti-Valentine hating that I’ve seen around in other years. Rather than just being (understandably) negative about the consumerist onslaught, how about doing something much more positive/useful/affirming instead?
I confess to observing the day but rejecting the commercialism. I have made my own card (using Creative Commons Licensed images) for my beloved and we will be cooking each other a scrumptious meal. I have bought him a small gift that I think he’ll find useful and just a wee bit shiny but is not in any way a traditional Valentine type item, so not pandering to the advertising overload. We will be spending the night at home with our kids, not out for just the two of us.
This is pretty much what we do most years, mind you. Sometimes we have both taken the day off and gone for a nice lunch somewhere before all that Special Date Night targeted razzmatazz gets under way, but we don’t manage that every year. We do make a point of avoiding the romantic industrial complex Hallmark Holiday cliché stuff every year. We’ll buy a bunch of flowers to enjoy together next week instead, maybe (florists need business all year round, not just this week!).
Apart from anything else, I hope that by being low-key and really keeping the day just for us and our kids, we’re not adding to the load of crap that singletons can go through every February.
Occupy Love asks us to be creators, not just consumers, of love stories:
Samhita aks folks to blog about more than just love stories – highlight other problematic aspects of the relentless promotion of V-Day: [using] Valentine’s Day to raise awareness about the limited ways we think about romance.
Please use this post for collating links to Occupy Love and Occupy Valentine’s Day posts that you’re reading around the web. Check out Samhita’s Occupy Valentine’s Day tumblr for ideas.
Related Posts:
- Tragedy of the Closet by tigtog
- Are you in on the joke? by Guest Hoyden
- Sunday Picblogging: Blech, Bling and Bahaha by Lauredhel
- The Gruen Transfer and comprehensive market research by tigtog
- Why you will want to love The Mountain Goats even more by blue milk
* Quicklink to recent open threads
CastIronBalcony: 
bluemilk: 
mindyhoyden: 
puzzlement: 
vivsmythe: 
ChallyWrites: 
ilauredhel: 
I am having lunch with a workmate since her husband hasn’t remembered for the past 8 years and mine and me don’t usually bother. Why go out for an expensive dinner on the 14th when you can often get the same nice dinner cheaper on the 15th. Or at least it’s easier to get a table.
I should think that spending on Valentine’s Day nonsense (however it jars with middle-class taste) rather than spending on OS holidays helps keep Australians in jobs …
I suspect spending a little on love tokens every week or month (as one can afford it) of the year does far more for keeping Australians in regular employment than spending up big just for one day of the year just to fund a few short contracts does, AT.
xkcd: Valentine’s Dilemma
Well, I wrote something called What Love Looks Like: Seeing Valentine’s Day Anew.
Something struck me while I was observing the queue of folks lining up at a shopping centre florist yesterday: Red roses were pretty much the only thing going, display-wise and in terms of what people were buying. Other colours and flowers didn’t get much of a showing. At all. Not only are there expectations and norms built around 14/2, those expectations and norms are so. Bloody. Specific. It’s quite something.