I joyously celebrate all holidays, except one. I don’t even mind the enforced bacchanal of St. Patrick’s Day (and, yes, I live near Boston).

Valentine’s Day, however, seems to put an undue strain both on one’s emotional and economic resources. 

When I was young – )and often, not in love or in the kind of love that felt more like swimming in a drainage ditch) – I would gaze around me with envy at people in my office exclaiming over gigantic floral deliveries, singing greetings, or candy boxes bigger than their heads. I would hear tales of reservations made months in advance for fancy exclusive restaurants, sparkling diamond earrings…

Who planned these things? Who was so considerate as to do so?

Nobody I knew.

I tried to console myself that a beloved who remembered Valentine’s Day (our anniversary, my birthday, my middle name…) might be deficient in other ways.

(This, like most consolations, was mostly an illusion.) 

While there are now people in my life who remember occasions, I still think that Valentine’s Day is a sort of pull-the-rug-out holiday, meant to make some people feel cherished, and others scorned – and to make everyone feel guilty. – JM