Don't bother me about Valentine's Day. As holidays go, I celebrate this one a little more than Boss Day but less than Boxing Day. More than anything, it gives me an excuse to consume gargantuan amounts of chocolate on top of tapioca pudding. With an embarrassingly long dateless streak, the holiday just doesn't do it for me.
I'm not protesting the fact that a holiday is set aside for lovers; I just don't want to hear about it in any excessive detail. I don't need to see a \Book of Love"" insert spread around my feet when I'm trying to read an otherwise fine publication. The campus doesn't require another excuse for one-night stands. And the last thing I need to see is more gaudy uses of pink colors.
Unless you're planning on knocking on my door with a seven-course meal, don't fill my head with stories about the day. You can save your stories about romantic dinners and long walks for somebody else. I don't care to hear about looking for some special person for the sake of a holiday that Hallmark propped up long ago.
'?There's really only one reason I like Valentine's Day, and that is the food.
Chocolate reigns on the day. If there's anything redeeming about Feb. 14, it's the fact that you're encouraged to swallow enough sugar-drenched provisions to kill a horse. The supermarkets push aside rations like bread and milk to make sure you are eating something so calorie-ridden that the only outcome is a plugged aorta.
Valentine's Day does not encourage consumption on the scale that Thanksgiving does, but it is more insidious in the types of food it offers.
Instead of variety, this holiday emphasizes only foods that will make your weight double in minutes. Where the November holiday gives a cornucopia of food, its February counterpart concentrates on the peak of the food pyramid, where all great and unhealthful sugars and sweets congregate.
The chocolate doesn't even need to meet the minimum requirement of sweetness or quality. I'm sure plenty of people buy expensive chocolate thinking that anything made in Europe has to be more impressive than the American type.
They are, of course, fools.
If people are buying chocolate that somehow manages to taste bitter, they might as well be shelling out cash for cow manure. There shouldn't be some premium on the finery or exquisiteness of chocolate. It is made to be enjoyed, not analyzed. When chocolate becomes pretentious, the whole concept of buying it for someone might as well be forgotten as easily as the Segway.
The only possible way to make the word ""chocolate"" better is to put the word ""milk"" in front of it. And that's usually a hit-or-miss addition.
Obviously the food makes the holiday. But then again, what holiday isn't made or broken by the offerings at the dinner table?
The aisles of just about any food emporium are suddenly awash in every possible variation of chocolate and hearts, reshaped and remade into whatever seems appealing.?? The sheer overload of it all seems foolish, as if love can be made into some candy and sold by the dozen. When faced with acres of the stuff, Valentine's Day seems nonsensical in its extremes.
However, the curmudgeon in me will step aside for a little bit on this occasion and admit that I'm somewhat partial to the better romantic impulses of the day. If Valentine's Day is appropriately poetic with all the qualities of moonlight and good music, it's worth it.
The spirit of St. Valentine should never be insulted with cheap pick-up lines or regrettable hook-ups. For one day, please, could we not think of sex and romance as the same thing? Could we at least dig out the dusty Shakespeare collection and try to recite some sonnets? Or maybe we could go ice-skating at Tenney Park instead of some bar.
As for me, I'll be writing some poetry to old flames and trying out lines like, ""Skipping stone smoothness and morning light laughter / Reminds me of you and warm memories after."" You see why my dateless streak continues.
But I won't despair for the holiday, because I'll probably just end up at home, shoveling down ice cream and trying to convince myself that oatmeal and maple syrup is a romantic late-night snack. That is, unless, I receive that seven-course dinner at my door.
Ben Schultz is a senior majoring in English and history. You can, in fact, bother him about Valentine's Day at blschultz@wisc.edu.
