Why Valentine’s Day Is A Scam (And Why We Love It Anyway)
Valentine’s Day is the only holiday that makes people panic-buy romance like it’s a limited-edition feeling.
If I’m being honest, I have no idea why Valentine’s Day really exists. I’m sure it has something to do with a big, fancy story from about a million years ago, but whatever meaning it once had feels completely lost on me.
Now Valentine’s Day marks a season of chocolate, giant flowers, teddy bears holding tiny balloons, red hearts everywhere, and aggressively overdone romance. This is peak time for those little chocolate boxes and the cheap valentines we used to pass out in school. Maybe that’s what Valentine’s Day has become.
Some people say Valentine’s Day isn’t just a marketing scam, that it actually means something. Or at least, it should mean something. But things aren’t always how they’re supposed to be. Traditions change. And what if the meaning of Valentine’s Day isn’t what it used to be? What if it’s now nothing more than a consumer trap for people trying to put a price on love?
I mean… since when does love cost $15.99 and a box of chocolates?
(By the way, I will not accept your love if it comes with those chocolates that have the weird “orange crème” inside. Absolutely not.)
But why is that an expectation at all? Just because the products exist doesn’t mean you have to buy into them. I’m a firm believer that homemade gifts can be a thousand times cooler than store-bought ones. This “holiday” glamorizes shopping when it would make way more sense to get people excited about making something special on their own, you know, actually made with love.
Instead, Valentine’s Day slowly stops being about love and starts being about the product.
Take giving out valentines to people you don’t even love. And I’m not talking about your friends or family (you obviously love them, just not romantically). And I’m not talking about doing something sweet to brighten a stranger’s day. I’m talking about obligation-valentines, the ones we were forced to give in elementary school.
That completely missed the point. It taught us early on that Valentine’s Day wasn’t about love at all, but about the stuff we were excited for: the candy, the cards with corny jokes, and the cool holographic stickers the fancy kids handed out.
Actually, let’s go down that rabbit hole for a second.
Giving valentines to every single kid in your class kind of devalued them. Something that could’ve been sweet turned into a corny, almost annoying ritual. You didn’t give a valentine because you cared, you gave one because the teacher said you had to.
But maybe Valentine’s Day itself is a little corny. Do we really need a whole day dedicated to love? Shouldn’t we treat the people we love well all year?
Or… is that exactly the point?
Maybe it’s a gentle reminder to actually pause and notice the people we care about. In reality, Valentine’s Day might not look like the messages we imagine, but the idea underneath is still there. Isn’t it kind of nice that we have an entire day devoted to love?
Even if we turned it into a consumer trap, that doesn’t mean that’s what it has to mean to us.
Valentine’s Day can be a day to give (or make) little gifts for people you love, an excuse to watch terrible rom-coms, a holiday where eating way too much chocolate is socially acceptable, and a reminder that there is love in your life, even when you don’t always feel it.
There isn’t always a need for flowers, or chocolates (although we would never turn down good chocolate), or candy (same goes for candy - bring it here), or cliché gifts.
All you really need is love.
(And okay… chocolate helps.)
In the end, Valentine’s Day might be a total scam.
But we can still love it anyway.
After all, the day is what we make of it, right?
