Why reserve a day for romance when there’s 364 other days in a year?

Cropped+shot+of+a+romantic+dinner+setting

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Cropped shot of a romantic dinner setting

By Jack Baudoin

Is it not weird to anyone else that there is a specific day of the year when people shower their significant others with love? Why is there this one day when people buy their boyfriend or girlfriend flowers and chocolates, as though they don’t have to be super romantic on the other 364 days of the year? If you are in a relationship, every day should be Valentine’s Day.

Being in a relationship means making a commitment to share part of your heart with another person. By doing this, you guarantee the other person that they have your love and you would do anything to make them happy. This is something that a person can do in the tiniest of ways possible, such as by making your significant other a coffee in the morning.

American’s were expected to spend $19.7 billion on Valentine’s Day in 2016, according to Fortune. Why is this much money being spent on a single day for relationships?

By reserving one day for romance, it gives a lot of people a cop out to not do all those  relationship type acts every other day of the year. By having a specific day of the year for a person to buy their significant other a gift and spend time together doing a relationship type activity, it might make them less keen to do so at other times of the year.

This is not saying that every relationship is like this, but the fact that there is a holiday that leans into relationships like these seems like an insult to the very idea of relationships. If two people are going about celebrating Valentine’s Day together there needs to be that passion outside of that day as well.

Valentine’s Day can hurt the feelings of people that have no one to celebrate the day with. For these people this day can sometimes feel as if it is punishing them for being single. Out of a 415 millennial survey done by Elite Daily, 28% of females and 35% of males feel apathetic towards Valentine’s Day, according to Shape. Having this large amount of people who do not like the holiday will make them feel singled out, not only by the amount of Valentine’s Day themed products that can be bought at this time, but also in the various deals that couples can get at different establishments on this day. 

It is easy to understand why people get excited for Valentine’s Day. The amount of relationship themed products and events on this day is enough to get any hopeless romantics’ heart in a flutter. However, with the implications of Valentine’s Day leading to less love- showing relationships, as well as singling out single people, it begs the question as to if this holiday should even exist in the first place.