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A couple of weeks ago Americans celebrated Valentine’s Day.  Wednesday, 14 February 2024 was the feast day for Saint Valentine, the patron saint of engaged couples, happy marriages, beekeepers, love, and even the mentally ill.  Perhaps that last one is a commentary on how love can—sometimes literally—drive us crazy.

It’s become something of a trend to denigrate Valentine’s Day as a commercial cash grab, a blatant invention of the candy and floral companies to boost their bottom line in the doldrums between Christmas and Halloween.  That’s true, of course, but that’s just the modern iteration of Valentine’s Day.  It’s worth looking at the deeper roots of the holiday to appreciate it.

Another trend is to decry Valentine’s Day as some kind of attack on the single and their emotional fragility.  I’ve been single on more Valentine’s Days than not, but it never bothered me to see explosive expressions of love.  Red and pink hearts never drove home my own singleness, or made me feel bad for not having a girlfriend.  Thus, we have “Singles Awareness Day” and “Galentine’s Day”—even “Palentine’s Day.”  I’m not opposed to cutesy nomenclature, per se, and people having a bit of self-aware fun, but there is a certain anti-Valentinian undercurrent to it all.  And isn’t being anti-Valentine’s Day the same as being anti-love?

Well, that’s a false dichotomy on my part, but I do think we have a serious anti-romance problem.

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