Don’t let Valentine’s Day fund your love

Gaudy bows, purple, frilly lace, and pink hearts remind me how much Valentines Day is like a bad flashback to the 80’s.

I suddenly feel the need to dig up those red heart-printed leg warmers I wore as a child.

Somehow everything about this holiday strikes me as tacky, fake and forced.

I’m not a single, lonely student with nothing to hug but my pint of Ben and Jerry’s Phish food like you might think.

I’ve recently found the history to this sweet holiday to be fake as well.

The most popular fabrication was the version about how Emperor Claudius II decided to outlaw marriage. Valentine, who was a priest that continued to marry young couples in secret, was thrown in jail and sentenced to death.

Valentine fell in love with the jailor’s daughter and wrote her a letter signed, ‘From your Valentine.’

What a heart-wrenching tale. I suddenly feel compelled to send out mini-envelopes with Batman saying, “I love you Valentine” in his word bubble.

So what if the legend proved to be true?

I still don’t understand why at 5 p.m. on Feb. 14 people rush out for a bouquet of flowers, chocolate and a teddy that looks like something from a Miami Vice love scene.

I think all of that money spent on useless crap that says “Be Mine” could be better spent on a day you spontaneously take off work to spend with that special someone.

Genuine spontaneity is something that usually sparks the romance in a relationship, not celebrating a day that is marked on everyone’s desk calendar.

Keep in mind that those heart-shaped M&M’s with high heels and bottles of lover’s lamp oil love potion (It’s real I’ve seen it) are funding the in-between-holiday lull for corporations.

So the day after Christmas when fat kids with wings on pink backgrounds start floating around your favorite department store, stop.

Put effort into your relationships, not multi-billion dollar industries of fabricated love. Keep your spontaneity and romance. Just don’t spend it on a day the whole nation is expecting.

-- Carmela Amador

Copy-Editor, The Ledger