To Celebrate or Not to Celebrate (Leah)

I wanted to post something I’ve been thinking about but I don’t want to be “negative.” We’ll see how it goes. This week one of my single guy friends sent an article to me about Valentine’s. It basically stated that it’s a retailers’ holiday and should be boycotted for the sake of true love. Bob full heartedly agreed with the article. I’m one to shun “the establishment” and I too hate to think I’m being “sold” anything so normally I’d be agreeing with him. Well, maybe it’s because I’m happily connecting with Phil these days, but I found myself disagreeing. (Maybe if I’d read the article during a between-Phils stage I’d have agreed with it.) Anyway, because this anti-vday article got me thinking about how men (Bob is a guy and the author of the article is a guy) view the holiday I began noticing how other men I know (married friends, co-workers, etc) view the holiday. And I was surprised and a bit sad to see plenty of v-day haters. I get the impression that they don’t like it because they feel manipulated. Nobody likes to be manipulated. I think in the world of expressing emotion there can be a lot of undue pressure put on men to express things they may feel, but would rather not express on command or in a rote way. It DOES seem that society has trained us to think that the only acceptable form of expressing affection is in the form of candy and flowers. Well, with all this thinking I decided that if a man really wants to buck the system and be independent and non-manipulated by the retail industry he can find plenty of alternative ways for expressing his emotion. As for the date he does it – I say it never hurts to have an excuse to show some love. It’s like ward temple day – sure you can go when you want, but it’s sort of nice to have a set date to do it in case you tend to forget and there’s something communal and good natured about doing it with others. Celebrate!