In defence of Valentine’s Day

The time has come to stick up for Valentine’s Day.

As a “holiday”, St. Valentine’s sacred day seems to come under a lot of fire, mainly from people who are either too cool or too bitter to enjoy it. And it needs to stop.

Firstly, as somebody in a relationship, Valentine’s Day can be relied upon as a relatively shit excuse to do something nice. What’s wrong with that? Depending on you and bae’s tastes, you can make all manner of romantic gestures somewhere on the V-Day scale between small and cute to huge and cringey. Buy your better half some red roses. It’s a cliché, but who cares.

Or even better, ask them on a date to Balti King, Sheffield’s romantic heartland.

it’s hard not to love a man who orders you a cheesy naan

Go on gal

And even if romance completely does not entice you in any shape or form, just go for dinner with your bestie. There’s always loads of restaurant offers knocking about, and the good vibes on this holy day are entirely impossible to ignore.

Whatever you do, and whoever you do it with, the point is to simply do something nice. It’s a free excuse to spend time with someone you like after coming through the shittest month of the year. Don’t fight it. Embrace the love.

Mates b4 dates

What type of person could possibly openly dislike a holiday specifically invented to give people an excuse to spend time with the people they love anyway? The cool kid, that’s who: that hipster-looking guy in your first year seminar who constantly asserts his dominance over the group by reminding you that gender is a social construct, or that The 1975’s early stuff is still their best. This is the guy who is trying super hard to ruin Valentine’s Day.

And why? Because of that classic pseudo-intellectual one-liner about Valentine’s Day being a fake holiday imagined up by our capitalist overlords to force us to blindly spend more of our hard-earned cash on needless shit. Well, I’ve got a newsflash for you, Valentine’s Day haters.

Christmas isn’t really about Jesus’ birthday, and Easter isn’t really about the day he rose from the dead. Do we care? Do we still share gifts in December and eat tonnes of chocolate in April? Thought so.

Cringe

Valentine’s Day is no different. It’s literally a day entirely conceived to give us a reason to do some nice stuff with someone you like. What is there to dislike here?

Unless you’re so grumpy that it isn’t a historically founded holiday based on fact, spend your Valentine’s Day behaving annoyingly cutesy and cringey with our boyfriends, girlfriends, bffls, or strangers you meet over a kebab. Because that’s what the rest of us will be doing on this wondrous day.

Valentine’s Day is the most joyful holiday of the calendar year. You can’t deny it.