Hey, Haters: It's OK to Love Valentine's Day

Torie Bosch has Valentine’s Day plans tomorrow—and not of the ironic sort. No, she has romantic Valentine’s Day plans, and she has a message for all the Valentine’s Day haters out there: That fact does not make her a brainwashed moron. In certain circles, “admitting to enjoying Valentine’s Day is about as socially acceptable as including ‘obey’ in your wedding vows,” she writes on Slate. “Feeling smug about seeing through the holiday is now akin to feeling superior about buying organic.”

Her problem lies not with those singletons who find V-Day “alienating,” but with “the couples who say they are ‘above’ Valentine’s Day.” First of all, those people are wrong about Hallmark or the jewelry industry creating the holiday; it’s been celebrated for centuries: “Some bloke has been grumbling about ye olde empty sentiment since at least 1829.” Secondly, why the uproar over needing a special day to remind us to romance our partners? We have a bunch of days like that, from Mother’s Day to Thanksgiving to birthdays. Enough with the bitterness, she concludes: Maybe the haters “would feel less angry if [they] just had a little chocolate—or a sweet Valentine's Day hug.”
(More Valentine's Day stories.)