Valentine’s Day Doesn’t Have to Suck

A guide for V-Day cynics and Solo Moms

Valentine’s Day could bum out a Solo Mom for a whole host of reasons:

• The nation’s obsession with coupled, romantic love that can leave a solo person feeling left out of something big.
• The hassle and expense of outfitting your children with just the right cards to hand out to their friends (who will hardly look at them before crumpling them up and tossing them in the garbage bin, anyway).
• The sugar. The sugar. The sugar. The kids hopped up on sugar.
• The rampant commercialization of love.

If that’s not enough to sour you, check out the economics: according to History.com, the week before Valentine’s Day, Americans spend $448 million on candy. What else could we do with that money? How many hungry people could we feed? How many warm blankets and beds could we provide?

And what about the waste? Each year, 36 million heart-shaped chocolate boxes are sold. About 8 billion — yes billion — of those chalky, soapy-tasting Sweethearts are produced, “enough candy to stretch from Rome, Italy, to Valentine, Arizona, 20 times.” That’s a whole lot of cardboard, plastic, ribbons, and fake flowers headed to the landfill.

Admittedly, I’ve always been a bit of a Valentine’s Day cynic, but when my children were born, I began rethinking our culture’s most highly marketed holidays. How would I make meaning of these days for my kids — and Valentine’s Day, in particular?

Sure, I could describe V-Day as I saw it: a ritual of compulsory heterosexual coupling, during which affection is expressed through purchases of overpriced roses (literally: florists double the price of flowers in February) and waxy chocolates.

Or I could look for a deeper meaning in the day, for my kids and for me.

I chose the latter.

I started my quest by researching the history of V-Day. What started as a fertility festival called Lupercalia in Ancient Rome was co-opted by the Catholic Church when Pope Gelasius named February 14 Saint Valentine’s Day, which was then co-opted by greeting-card companies, eventually transforming the pseudo holiday into the gift-industry cash cow it is today.

Right. No applicable deeper meaning there.

So I decided to focus on the presumed heart (pun intended) of V-Day: love.

As cynical as I may be about romance as it’s played out in Valentine’s Day marketing strategies, I am equally in love with love. Real love:

• Love, as in the energy I feel when I hold my children in my arms.
• Love, as in the warmth I experience when surrounded by family and friends.
• Love, as in the inexplicable force that blankets me in times of trouble and reassures me that, yes, I am OK.
• Love, as in “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.”

Even V-Day cynics like me can get excited about a day that celebrates that kind of love.

How about you, Solo Mama? Ready to rescue real love from the jaws of Valentine’s Day? These activities can help:

Continue reading at https://esme.com/voices/perspectives/valentines-day-doesnt-have-to-suck