How to Survive Valentine's Day

Photo by: Sydney Meyer

Valentine’s Day: You either love it or you hate it. The day is marked with lace and chocolate, inspired heart doodles in the margins of homework assignments and elicits dreams of stuffed animals the size of a small child. Though couples are the focus of Valentines Day, everyone is subjected to the combinations of violet and red and the excessive focus on love, romance and all things cheesy.

But this year, Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be a downer. Below are some tips about how to peacefully protest this vile holiday, whether you are in a relationship or not.

1. Stay away from radios.

You know as well as I do that, come Valentine’s Day, there will be nothing but love songs on the radio. Instead of suffering through the sappy lyrics, dust off some of your dad’s old head-banger records and blare them at full-blast. That will certainly create a mood.

2. Forget about the heart-shaped chocolate.

Instead of buying boxes of chocolate on Valentine’s Day, make the day after Valentine’s Day the real event and hold off purchasing the heart-shaped candy. It will be discounted and totally worth the wait. Go ahead and snack on discounted Christmas candy and popcorn instead.

3. Forget the steak.

Everyone is either going to be eating out or cooking up some sort of impressive steak dinner. Instead of going with the crowd, dare to stand out. Cook something simple, like a big bowl of macaroni. Nothing else will warm the heart quite like the ultimate comfort food.

4. Only horror movies allowed here.

Chick flicks are acceptable on almost any other night, except for Valentine’s Day. Nothing will say “I’m not partaking in this act of mindless consumerism” quite like refusing to buy into the cliché romance movie on the night of the 14^th.

5. Forget the flowers.

What use are flowers anyway? They just dry up on your countertop and leave a big mess to clean up. Instead, how about buying a bouquet of fresh herbs from your local supermarket? These can be used to cook with and smell good. Plus, how sophisticated will you look with a big bundle of herbs drying over your stove?

6. Spend the day helping other people instead.

Valentine’s Day is supposed to be a day of love, right? Well, nothing expresses love quite the same way service does. By helping your neighbor, you’ll be partaking in selfless love, which definitely is the opposite of typical Valentine’s Day expectation.

7. Give out valentines.

Instead of getting annoyed with the hearts taped up everywhere and the bouquets being delivered to everyone, why not give some out instead? We all remember those elementary parties where it was required to give everyone a valentine. Just make sure you have some method of recording the expressions you get when handing out Valentine’s Day cards to random people.

8. Laugh at the sap.

One reason Valentine’s Day is so ridiculous is because of its requirement of loving expression. People are forced to “show” how much they care through consumerism, which places an extraordinary amount of pressure on each person as they try to determine the perfect and most heartfelt gift that will properly express how they feel. Well, little do they know that no physical item can quite conceptualize an emotion in its entirety. So it’s just best to laugh at those who feel they have to spend a fortune to manifest an abstract concept.