2008 Woodie Awards
I will spend Valentine's Day cold and alone
Matt Altieri
Issue date: 2/13/08 Section: Opinion
Valentine's Day, please, don't make me puke. For our entire existences we have managed to make it through most every Valentine's Day, but always come out of it feeling much stupider than before. Not from the mind-numbing couples that suck face all day, exchanging flowers and candy like it's some sort of currency, but the excessive, date-making, card-filling love-propaganda that is so widely loved in American society. This is what makes us vomit the most.
How can a holiday, supposedly out of love, become so materialistic to the point of where even when we are young, we are taught the importance of the exchange of candy hearts and cheap, cartoon-characterized cards? Not only this, but the excess of money that the American public will spend on this day is completely ludicrous. Kiss that $16.90 billion dollars goodbye, America, you've wasted it on candy that will only make that heart attack come that much faster, on crappy cards you'll throw away when your boyfriend dumps you, and on jewelry that we wish we could steal from your girlfriend and hawk to a pawn shop. I would imagine that St. Valentine is turning over in his grave, if I could pick out the Valentine that would be most upset that his name is associated with the holiday; until 1969, the Catholic Church formally recognized eleven St. Valentines.
Of course, I have to blame someone. Someone who would be diabolical enough to turn this holiday into an American travesty, someone who would exaggerate histories of this holiday and leave us with the expenses and expectations that Valentine's Day brings. One can trace this back all to America's first enemy: England. Around 1382, a man named Geoffrey Chaucer put out a poem Parlement of Foules and he couldn't have put it out at a worse time. Parlement of Foules, a poem originally intended to celebrate the marriage of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia (keep in mind the poem is celebrating the marriage of a 12- and 13-year-old…gross) was the first term used to describe this day as the day for lovers.
How can a holiday, supposedly out of love, become so materialistic to the point of where even when we are young, we are taught the importance of the exchange of candy hearts and cheap, cartoon-characterized cards? Not only this, but the excess of money that the American public will spend on this day is completely ludicrous. Kiss that $16.90 billion dollars goodbye, America, you've wasted it on candy that will only make that heart attack come that much faster, on crappy cards you'll throw away when your boyfriend dumps you, and on jewelry that we wish we could steal from your girlfriend and hawk to a pawn shop. I would imagine that St. Valentine is turning over in his grave, if I could pick out the Valentine that would be most upset that his name is associated with the holiday; until 1969, the Catholic Church formally recognized eleven St. Valentines.
Of course, I have to blame someone. Someone who would be diabolical enough to turn this holiday into an American travesty, someone who would exaggerate histories of this holiday and leave us with the expenses and expectations that Valentine's Day brings. One can trace this back all to America's first enemy: England. Around 1382, a man named Geoffrey Chaucer put out a poem Parlement of Foules and he couldn't have put it out at a worse time. Parlement of Foules, a poem originally intended to celebrate the marriage of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia (keep in mind the poem is celebrating the marriage of a 12- and 13-year-old…gross) was the first term used to describe this day as the day for lovers.
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