Goldfarb

It’s that time of year again, a joyous chance to celebrate the corporatization of positivity and bow to our Hallmark overlords. That’s right folks, it’s Valentine’s Day, and the people here at The Grizzly have chosen me – the closest thing the BIB community has to a hermit – to recognize the holiday that may or may not deserve its status as a proper noun. 

To begin, I’d like to provide a brief overview of the history of Valentine’s Day as told by the good people at History.com. It is unclear who the holiday’s namesake truly was, the title has been tossed between multiple saints named Valentine or Valentinus recognized by the Catholic Church. Legends of this mysterious figure range from performing marriages in secret after they had been outlawed, to helping Christians escape Roman prisons and sending the first-ever valentine after falling in love, though in almost every iteration of the story our figurehead saint ends up beheaded by the Emperor Claudius II for his efforts. Further obscurity surrounds the origin of the Valentine’s Day celebrations, some say it was to recognize the anniversary of the Saint’s burial, others contend it was an attempt by the church to redefine the pagan celebration of fertility, Lupercalia, which took place on the ides of February. Lupercalia was outlawed by the Pope at the end of the 5th century and February 14th was declared Valentine’s Day, but it was only later that the holiday came to be associated with romance, as it was widely believed during the middle ages that this same time was the beginning of bird’s mating season. 

Nowadays, according to the most reputable source out there, Wikipedia, Valentine’s Day has become a significant cultural, religious, and commercial celebration of romance and love in many regions of the world. A common criticism of the holiday is its newfound commercial identity, and Valentine’s Day spending statistics from the National Retail Federation seem to support this: it’s predicted that Americans will spend $25.8 Billion on Valentine’s Day this year, with an average of $185.8 per person. 

As the culture of the date becomes increasingly capitalistic, it’s not hard to draw the line and simply write the day off as another Hallmark Holiday, but there’s another part of the holiday I’d like to spotlight: something I have dubbed ‘The Valentine’s Day Bottleneck’. At its core, the modern Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love. According to a Super Bowl ad I saw a while ago, there are at least four words for love in Greek, and each one works to specify a different branch of the feeling. Some focus on self-love, others on familial or brotherly love, and still others are reserved for romantic love and more for the love of a deep friendship. Our current Valentine’s Day customs encourage us to restrict our view of love and limit its definition to a purely romantic one. This is ‘The Valentine’s Day Bottleneck’: a yearly societal disservice to a feeling one word can’t contain. 

Personally, I can’t imagine the mysterious Saint Valentine, whoever he may be, would approve of such a restricting practice. In an attempt to break the bottleneck, this year I suggest we all take a moment to dedicate some of our Valentine’s Day to our friends and family, but more power to all who take advantage of their regularly scheduled recognition of romance. Anyhow, that’s all this hermit has to say, so on behalf of The Grizzly, happy Valentine’s Day.