Is Valentine's Day Overrated?

By Megan Robert

Every year when February 14th rolls around, the world is divided into two groups - Valentine’s Day lovers and those who hate it with a burning passion. Even centuries after the holiday’s disputed origin, we can’t decide if behind all the greeting cards and flowers, Valentine’s Day is a meaningful holiday or just an elaborate money-making scheme.

The origins of Valentine’s Day are largely disputed. According to NPR, the Roman feast of Lupercalia occurred from February 13 -15 and involved a ceremony where a priest would sacrifice a goat and dog which represented fertility and purification, respectively. Men would then use the hides to beat the women and as it was supposed to bring fertility the following year. It also had a Hunger Games-ish matchmaking ceremony where names were drawn from a jar to determine the couples for the duration of the festival (or if it went well, even longer).

The other possible origin is the feast day of St. Valentine, or technically St. Valentines as there were multiple men named

Valentine who were executed on Feb. 14, but in different years. One St. Valentine was executed by Emperor Claudius II for marrying young lovers in secret. The Emperor outlawed marriages for young men because he saw that men without families made better soldiers. When the Emperor found out about St. Valentine’s illegal marriages he wasn’t thrilled, to say the least, and had St. Valentine killed.

However, there is also another theory of a St. Valentine who helped Christians escape brutal Roman prisons. There’s even a legend of Valentine being trapped in a prison, falling in love with (possibly) his jailor’s daughter, and sending her a letter signed “From your Valentine” which may be the origin of the phrase we use today. However, all these legends are mostly theories and no one knows for sure the exact origins of Valentine’s Day.

While many people think that Valentine’s Day is a fairly recent development, the first recorded evidence of actual “valentines” appear as early as the 1500s, as St. Valentine became quite popular in the Middle Ages. According to Britannica, “the first commercial valentines in the United States were printed in the mid-1800s.” However, these cards were mostly handmade and often had puzzles and poems. Now, American Greeting Corporation makes nearly 425 million dollars on Valentine’s Day sales alone.

The meaning of Valentine’s Day has changed from being a holiday to show your appreciation for loved one’s to a day of obligation. According to a study done by Angelina Close Scheinbaum, an associate professor of marketing at UT Austin, 63% of men and 31% of women feel obligated to buy something for their partner. Giving a gift out of obligation takes away the entire point of giving a gift, not to mention taking a toll on buyer’s wallets, especially just 2 mont

hs after Christmas. The obligation also unfairly impacts consumers with men having a larger obligation to spend more money or just give gifts in general. Scheinbaum calls this obligation a social psychology theory called reactance. Consumers like to buy things of their own free will. But when society and corporations tell us that we have to buy stuff on a specific day, we feel like our free will is restricted. The less freedom we have to just not buy that gift or those flowers or that greeting card, the more it seems like a better option.

In the end, love is an emotion that can’t ever be expressed through materialistic things like dinner reservations or a holiday originating from killing a few men. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t try. Valentine’s Day doesn’t just have to be a holiday for romantic love. It can also be a day to show your appreciation for your friends, family, or just people you love. No matter how much we complain about our obligations, no one can deny that the little gifts that we get on Valentine’s Day make us feel loved. And in the end, isn’t that what it’s all about? Well, that and buying half-priced candy on February 15th.