I love holidays and celebrate them well, largely successfully without being drawn into commercialization. I can tell this is true because while I would love to have buying a new house coincide with my birthday, having it occur near Valentine’s Day would create no significance.

At the the bar I sometimes work, I made sure we went completely overboard on April 23rd. We got England flags all over the place, George Cross hats and the girls at the bar were all decked out in George Cross bikinis. It was awesome.

But what I like about those days is that there is no requirement to celebrate them if you do not wish to, and they are inclusive. Valentines is non-inclusive of everyone, but worse than that it is almost a relationship requirement which many people do out of a sense of duty rather than a desire to show love or affection. It’s like singing the national anthem at a ball game. You stand up and do so because every bugger else is, not necessarily because you want to sing a nice song about being the home of the brave and the land of the free. (Incidentally, we don’t do that over here.)

I guess my general motivation is that I will take any reason to celebrate: go out, hang out with friends, have a few drinks, laugh and have a good time. So bring the holidays on, lets make some new ones, and let’s not worry about how the commercial industry tries to exploit it, because they try to exploit everything anyways. In fact, lets try to lay an axe to the root of exploitation, not the holiday itself.

But, as I hope I indicated, I do see your point.

But I stand by my position on this. The commercialization of Valentines is trashy and simply exploits us. My annoyance at that drives me to want to rebel against it, to go out of my way (in good humor) to NOT do anything romantic because I am quite capable of being romantic outside of the time allowed by Hallmark.

Having said this, I do not wish to take away from anyone’s enjoyment of the most awful and trashy so-called holiday of the year. And on March 17th, you’re more than welcome to claim some Irish heritage if you so please too