Oh, Valentine’s Day. Some people love it, some people hate it. Valentine’s Day itself is highly commercialized through the media and the public. There are commercials on television starting right on February 1, sometimes even before. Stores around the country start to put out their Valentine’s Day items sometimes right after Christmas.
This is extremely unnecessary in my opinion. In general, the American industry is completely skewed when it comes to holidays as a whole. Items for Christmas start to be put out around Halloween, for example. Valentine’s Day, to be specific, is the worst.
Valentine’s Day is highly publicized through commercials, TV, movies, the media, etc. Every TV show out there has a Valentine’s Day episode on or around the actual date. The most popular TV shows from Glee to Modern Family pride themselves on their yearly Valentine’s specials. In 2010 there was a movie directed by Gary Marshal about the holiday itself called, appropriately, Valentine’s Day. The movie included high profile people in the entertainment business like Anne Hathaway, Jessica Alba, Patrick Dempsey, Taylor Swift, Taylor Lautner, Julia Roberts, Emma Roberts, Ashton Kutcher, George Lopez, Bradley Cooper and many more.
Movies and TV profile Valentine’s Day as a day to buy your significant other material items to show your affection for one another. It is understood as a beautiful, loving holiday where nothing can go wrong if you are with the one you love. In actuality, the holiday was a completely different celebration hundreds of years ago in ancient Rome.
There are many claims to where Valentine’s Day originated. The most common matryology claims a story about breaking the law during the time of war under an emperor. Back then there was an emperor named Claudius who deemed it illegal for single soldiers to get married. He believed that a solider that was single would fight better than one who was married. Valentine, who was a priest at the time of war, married those single soldiers in secret if wanted. Also, during his imprisonment he fell in love with the jailer’s daughter. Since he was in love and the only communication method was letters he signed each of his letter, “From your Valentine.” This ending has become the most common ending to letters on February 14 between lovers.
Another story of the origin comes from the fifteenth century. This is where the romantic part of the holiday allegedly comes from. This was under Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages when the tradition of courtly love was introduced and it flourished. The tradition of exchanging gifts and symbols that are evident today then came into play from these traditions.
Even though the tradition of giving gifts was something that has been evident from the fifteenth Century, it has become overwhelming.
Greeting cards were introduced in the nineteenth Century and have become less and less personal than they were hundreds of years ago. In history people sent cards on eloquent paper with extremely personal messages carefully written on them. Now, people walk into stores like Target and Rite-Aid and buy a Hallmark card that most likely 150 people had bought at the same store.
Candy and flowers are also huge symbols of Valentine’s Day. Companies can make anything into a candy or make something shaped in chocolate. People barely buy roses or flowers anymore when they could buy it in a candy shaped or even plastic. This makes the holiday extremely impersonal.
Companies’ main goal during the month of February is just to sell items for people to buy and give to their significant other. The messages on greeting cards are stiff and unfriendly. People in this time period do not know any different, they just know of cards that say “Be mine!” or “I love you.” Companies know that these phrases will sell so they do not even take the effort to let people personalize their cards because they know humans will just want the easy way out. This it truly taking advantage of people’s weaknesses and commercializing the holiday as a whole.
In conclusion, Valentine’s Day can be great!…if you like impersonal messages that were created in some factory in Middle America. If people really wanted to show their true feelings they would take the time to make their own cards and carefully pick out gifts and not give into the commercialization of the holiday.
