Valentine’s Day
As students walked through hallways and skirted between buildings, only the occasional pop of red or pink poked out beneath winter jackets and zipped up hoodies. Walking through the St. Thomas University campus on February 14th felt like any other day. Only a few cafeteria decorations and a candy fundraiser gave hints of the special day.
Yes, Valentine’s Day. Despite the lack of festivities on campus, Valentine’s Day racks up a hefty price tag. CNN predicted that Americans would spend $19.6 billion on Valentine’s Day in 2018. Our campus’ participation with the occasional pink shirt and some glittery heart cut-outs on the cafeteria menu board didn’t seem to reflect this number, so I decided to talk to some people around campus and see what they had to say about Valentine’s Day.
While the overall consensus was positive, I got the feeling that most people didn’t really see Valentine’s Day as that big of a deal. “I’m definitely indifferent about it” says Hillary, a second year student at STU. “I don’t hate it. It’s not my favourite day of the year but at the same time it’s fun, you know, people get excited about it”.
Others found the holiday to be too materialistic. Lindsey, an employee of the university’ s cleaning staff, says she associates the holiday with pressure to buy gifts for people. “There’s not as much thought into ‘oh let’s write a nice note’ and like put my feelings down on a piece of paper”. While she was happy with the chocolates she received from her boss that day, Lindsey expressed some desire for people to focus more on showing their feelings rather than supplementing them with gifts.
Third year student Reuben, although he was wearing a red shirt, found the day to be a little redundant. “I think its a nice idea that we have that one time a year to do cheesy things. But why have it once a year? If you’re gonna show your love for your loved one you should do that whenever you want instead of following social norms”.
St. Thomas students may not be spending a lot of money on Valentine’s day, but they certainly have their hearts in the right place. Americans however were estimated to spend $143.56 on average this year on gifts for their Valentines. It was predicted that 114 million Valentine’s cards will be exchanged, $4.7 billion spent on jewelry, and, for those of you who love to spread the love to your pets, $5.50 per capita was expected to be spent on gifts for pets this Valentine’ s Day.
Going out to dinner or buying your loved a rose shouldn’t be reserved forone day a year, but it is nice to have a day where we can be reminded of the love that we share. And even if you don’t have a significant other, many use Valentine’s day as a day for self love and taking care of yourself.
“Take yourself on a date” says Lindsey, and spend more time giving yourself the love you deserve.
“The world we live in nowadays I don’t think we focus on ourselves enough” Hillary says, “and I think that’s something we should do more.”
Whether you have someone to share the day with or you want to spend quality time with yourself, don’t forget that while Valentine’s Day is only once a year, love should be shared all year round.
