We set in stone certain expectations for Valentine’s Day.
There’s the stereotypical gifts of chocolate, roses and dates. There is a gathering of friends if romance isn’t in the picture. There were childhoods spent in grade school making meticulous paper bags to give to classmates. Other people may indulge in treating themselves to something similar alone when they have time to.
But who are we kidding? On a Thursday in the middle of the week, college students already have enough on their plates.
The beginning of this week had SRU’s campus left to deal with the freezing rain frozen to the ground only slowly thawing as we try to navigate without slipping into ice. 2025 has felt like that so far, so it’s fitting.
At least it does when you’re not living on autopilot like so many of us do because the alternative is to plug in and be bombarded with headline after headline of one egregious thing after the next. Just in time for this year’s Valentine’s Day.
Maybe this commercial celebration of romance can numb some of us. It’s better than doom scrolling. I can’t blame anyone else for wanting this holiday as we celebrate it.
Maybe I sound like a pessimist, but I am much more ambivalent towards this holiday than anything else. I am pessimistic a good amount of the time, don’t get me wrong. It’s just difficult to get into the spirit of the holiday when we’re reminded of current administration plunging the rights of many and the cultural climate being as divided as it is.
Granted, I clearly have a side to take in that division and I really would rather not extend kindness and understanding to the bigoted rhetoric of those who threaten the safety of others for the sake of having their way.
Happy Valentine’s Day our dystopia is here and it’s only getting worse. Putting that aside for now, I wanted to go into some history for a perspective of what Valentine’s meant before. I’m not talking about some idealized past certain groups of people salivate from their romanticized version of but of the beginning of this holiday.
It began in the 3rd Century Roman Empire with the decapitation of St. Valentine. How romantic? Well, in a certain sense, yes. He died a martyr’s death after performing Christian weddings and in doing so defying Rome. Please, no one actually lose their head like him.
It sends a message though. Agnostic as I am, I can appreciate the dedication of rebelling against an unjust state for the sake of a conviction of love. And if it’s this form of love on which the Valentine’s Day of now is formed, we should take that to heart.
Resistance is this love in knowing that the “T” will always belong in LGBTQ+ no matter what any government will say. No person deserves deportation or loss of rights regardless of citizen status. It’s in celebrating the recent achievements of Black artists despite cries of people crying “DEI” and not knowing what that means.
It exists in finding a place of solidarity in which important discussion is to be had. That love is shown in not getting caught in lethargy at all that is being thrown to us as a public. As much as I put out this form of love, I’m still more of a hater with a tendency to focus on all the harm that’s happening and who’s to blame. However, let’s take this day to shift perspective and remember where this celebration began.
