Valentine’s Day has been celebrated for centuries, remembered for cliche roses, chocolate boxes, and hearts. The real question though, is does Valentine’s Day send the wrong messages about relationships and love in general?

Valentine’s Day offers couples the opportunity to celebrate their relationships and give each other sweet gifts. This seems nice and charming, but if you wanted to get your loved one a gift, why would you have to wait for a holiday? 

Another issue with Valentine’s day is that it doesn’t have many things to teach people. For example, Christmas is supposed to emphasize the importance of family and being with your loved ones. And the Fourth of July has historical importance to our country. Valentine’s Day on the other hand? It has no lessons or historical significance to justify it.

Valentine’s Day also so obviously excludes a demographic. It’s a holiday strictly for those in relationships, going so far as to make those without a date feel lonely or rejected. 

If a couple wants to celebrate their relationship and honor their love, more power to them. I just don’t understand why there needs to be an entire day dedicated to it when they spend all their days together.

This holiday puts so much pressure on couples as well. They feel expected to do some grand or sweet gesture when in reality, it should be one hundred percent fine if they decided they would rather not celebrate.

In addition, Valentine’s day has been so overdone. Every gift you could think of is all materialistic and cliche. (Flowers? A box of chocolates? Fancy jewelry?)

This holiday plays into so many stereotypes and puts so much attention to what a conventional relationship should look like.

If you have a loved one, no holiday should dictate what your love should look like, or create rules that your relationship must confine to. 

Between movies, ads, and general consumerism, Valentine’s Day has such unrealistic expectations that just put pressure on couples to execute it all perfectly. It becomes more than just them wanting to make themselves happy, and more about trying to fit in with the world’s expectations.

Overall, it’s a useless holiday that makes single people feel bad, put pressure on couples, and confine to society’s ideals and definitions of love.