On Valentine's Day (Patreon)

Hello, darlings. Forgive my slight absence of late, I am snowed under with deadlines but will be back on top of things shortly.

On this very special day, I wanted to dig up on of my best essays, posted long ago on Livejournal, and thus lost to the sands of the internet. I've edited it quite a bit, because ten years have gone by, and perceptions of the world and people change. And because when I initially wrote this, it was 2009 and being bitter and ironic and detached was what all the cool things did, so enjoying anything felt revolutionary. Being sincere felt like being under siege. But now that the world has hurt us all so repeatedly, I see much less stomping around trying to enforce ironic detachment on everyone else, so I've toned down the defiance a little. That said, I heard almost everything mentioned in the essay on the mainstream radio a few days ago, and it was all I could do not to call in and yell.

This new version is my gift to all of you, my beloveds, on the Big V Day, in hopes that you will see this day ever so slightly differently. Or at least with a few more birds on it.

***

Every year, the radio, the internet, the meme economy are all full of people announcing they do not and never will like Valentine's Day. Some of those messages are nicely phrased. Some are not. But I have never understood the desire to stomp all over Valentine's Day and snuff it, of all the holidays, it and especially it, out. Every year, as regular as Christmas carols, I hear the litany of "This is a fake Hallmark holiday and no one should celebrate it" and "I hate this day, who's with me?" and my personal favorite guilt trip: "If you REALLY loved your partner, you'd treat them specially every day." 

Let's not even get into the whole "it's only for women and therefore it sucks" thing.

I don't get it. I don't understand the fervor to destroy a holiday. To force others to see it through the same black glasses. To shame anyone who celebrates the 14th with anything other than bile, vitriol, and the occasional superior sneer.

I know that most of us were shunned on Valentine's Day in school. Believe me, my little cubby was empty, just like yours, and I yearned for a construction paper heart from boy after boy (and the occasional girl, which was way too terrifying to reckon with)--and never got them. I understand that there is a history of trauma, and the standard geek reaction to past trauma is to organize the world so that there is no chance of that trauma re-occurring. 

Thus, Valentine's Day must be killed.

But here's the thing. 

Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays. Even when I've been single.

This world is a beautiful place, but it is also often dark, and cold, and unfeeling, and life slips by, not because it is short, but because it is long, and so difficult to hold onto. Holidays, rituals, these things demarcate the time. They remind us of the sharpness of pleasure and the nearness of death. They tell us when the sun leaves, and when it comes back. They tell us to dance and they tell us to sleep. They tell us who we are, who we have been since we lived on the savannah and hoped to taste cheetah before we died. I know we're all punk rock rebels, but the paleolithic joy of decorating our bodies and dancing around a fire and giving gifts doesn't go away just because certain of us would like to think we're beyond that. This world needs more holidays, not less. More ritual, the gorgeous, flexible, non-dogmatic kind that isn't about religion but about ecstasy in the sheer humanness of our bodies and souls. More chances to reach out, to sing, to love, to bedeck ourselves in ritual colors and become splendid as the year turns around.

And no, I'm sorry. It doesn't work to say "make every day special." First of all, most of you know damn well that you don't shower your partner with gifts and adoration and that most precious of things: dedicated, mindful time every day of the year. Even the best relationship is not a 24/7 orgiastic festival of plenty and perfect moments. No human can sustain it. If every day is special, none of them are. If every day is special, specialness becomes monotony. What makes days special is the time between, the anticipation of a the day, the planning, the surprises, coming together, cooking, playing, reveling in sheer time, watching the dedicated colors and rituals that wire our brain for pleasure spring up in the world to remind us that we live in it. The entire purpose of holidays is that they are a kind of otherworld we step into, full of special symbols, that informs and shapes everyday life--and some of life, no matter how some bloggers would like to deny it in their Grinchitude, is always everyday.

We celebrate the harvest. We celebrate the spring. We celebrate birthdays and death-days and the beginning of the year and the end of the year. We celebrate trees and labor and Presidents. What in the world is so terribly wrong with celebrating love? I know not all of us have partners, but it is a rare soul who is without love of any kind. Parents, children, friends, sheer human contact. All of these count as Valentines! You yourself alone and the relationship you have with your own heart is cause for celebration and treats. 

Self-love is love.

As for the commercialism of it--well. It is commercial. So is every holiday, yet somehow we don't stomp all over Easter the way we tar and feather Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day is no more a fake holiday than any other. If I hear someone call it a fake Hallmark holiday one more time I'm actually going to scream. 

Here's the real and honest truth. I'm only going to say this once:

Valentine's Day, boys and girls and both and neither and other, entered the Western mind in Geoffrey Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, fully-realized as a day to celebrate love via an obscure saint, with red hearts and everything. Yes, celebrated in an allegorical bird-nation consumed with debates over justice, but guess what? That makes it even more awesome. I will take a holiday my buddy Geoff invented over almost any other. If I had my way, we'd start exchanging bird-themed gifts (and book-themed!) and ditch Cupid altogether.

It's about birds and books. Winter, spent indoors reading and waiting for warmth to return. The birds coming back from their long migrations. Life coming back from its long migration. Song and flight and joy returning at last.

This is a great holiday. It's pure physical, sensual pleasure, divorced from any dogma or religion at this point. It's a fertility holiday that doesn't want to admit it's a fertility holiday. Saint whatever. Pass the sex and food.

And if you're not into sex, or it's a difficult subject just now, my loves, the food is enough. The color is enough. Fertility holidays are also about the fertility of the mind, the survival of your own body, the dream of thriving within it. Be mindful of the pleasure of simply existing in a body, whether that hot baths and good books or smelling flowers or eating chocolate or wearing something oh so bright and soft. The sensuality is the point--the senses. Waking up from winter. Surviving. Seeing the color come back.

And as a medieval holiday, it has quite a long pedigree, thank you very much, even if you don't count in the Lupercalia (which you really shouldn't, unless wolf skins play a large part in your personal celebrations. If so, more power to you). The fact is, some human made up every single holiday there is. They're ALL fake. No one is more real or authentic than any other. At least this one was invented by a broke poet instead of a bunch of angry priests. 

We live in a postmodern world--everything is what we make it. If Hallmark wants to force mainstream kids to buy jewelry they can't afford, they're more than welcome. I don't have to care about that, or take part in it. I know better. I know this day is an act of literature made flesh. Birds and books. But no one's world is less valid for being Geoff-less. Enjoy what you enjoy. Help others to enjoy what they enjoy.

And more than Geoff--think about it for a second. In the midst of winter, we are encouraged to come together and kiss and hug and snuggle up close. To escape the snow and ice feasting and company. The colors are red and rose and white--the colors of fire in the winter, of blood, of flesh, survival even in the barren times. We exchange hearts, the very vital core of our bodies. It is the last holiday before spring, to remind us that the fertile world will come again, with flowers and sweetness and love. Even surrounded by death, by blood on the snow, be it St. Valentine's blood or your own, life will win out. The traditional food is chocolate--which can be preserved through the winter and does not rot, full of sugar and fat which keep our bodies going through lean times. This holiday is as old as time: O world, even in the freezing storm, come together, find love if you can, but above all feast, smile, and know the sun is coming soon.

If you remove ritual from the world, you leave it greyer, and sadder, and all you have in its place is a long expanse of lonely time, which is a shallow and bitter triumph indeed. 

And this year, for birds' sake, when so many of us are alone, are unable to have that human contact, who cannot see family or partners or even friends, who have lost so much, including our own sense of time and self, being able to remind ourselves that we ARE still here, we CAN still love, that life WILL return, bright red and sweet, is absolutely vital, a desperate need.

So, here. I give you permission to enjoy Valentine's Day. Regardless of relationship status. Regardless of anything. Have a little chocolate, look out at the melting snow, and say something kind to someone you love. Make a card with a bird on it. Write a poem. Make something, anything. Choo-choo-choose life. To be human is to take part in ritual, to demarcate the time with feasting and song and vestments and ecstasy. Life slips by, so very fast. Spend it in the practice of joy.

Happy Valentine's Day. Geoff bless us. Every one.