The holiday is now all about about spending too much money on candy picked up on a whim

Last Friday, I went to get groceries after work. I stopped by the Valentine’s Day section and looked at the bags of candy on display.

I was planning on picking up some for my students. As I tried to decide, I remembered my daughter had Girl Scouts that day.

“Maybe we can get these Hershey’s bars. What do you think?”

“Oh, yeah!” she said. “We have 12 girls in the group.”

Total: Two bags of six fullsize Hershey’s bars, one for each. That’s $8. I put them in my cart and rolled on to the meat section. I realized it was such an automated process. It’s Valentine’s Day. That’s February 14. That’s a Thursday. Who do I see Thursday? What’s our schedule? Add, subtract, multiply, divide: candy.

I know I’m under no obligation to buy candy for students or the other girls in my daughter’s troop. But it made me wonder whether the holiday has taken all the thought out of showing others that we care. Maybe it’s time to let Valentine’s Day go.

I’m not saying that we should stop celebrating love or stop letting other people know how we feel about them. Showing our appreciation for friends, family and lovers is important emotional labor that we must do to nurture our personal relationships. But how much of Valentine’s Day, now, is just stores telling us how to do it?

Walk into any grocery, pharmacy or department store, and you will be showered with pink and red hearts. Reminders of “what she wants” abound. Is it a necklace? A ring? Dinner at a nice restaurant? Depends where you’re shopping!

Though Valentine’s Day has transformed over centuries from a pagan ritual to a Catholic feast to a poetry-inspired day to celebrate love, it has also become a retail occasion to make money between the winter holidays and spring and summer ones. I know so many people who now celebrate Valentine’s on February 13 or February 15 just to avoid the crowds. In fact, the National Retail Federation’s annual survey on consumer spending on Valentine’s Day, released just in time for this year, shows that, though just 51 percent of the people surveyed planned on celebrating, they planned on spending more money than they used to. The average is $161.96, and total spending is set to top $20.7 billion.

The bright side of the survey? We are spending more on friends and family; it’s not just about our lovers anymore. But there is no question that we have come a long way from the handmade valentines from our elementary school years. In America, it seems we can show our love and appreciation only by spending money. We communicate with things. I see it at work, where so many student organizations take the opportunity to make money by selling treats, flowers, even serenades! But maybe all this, all the fancy dinners and expensive jewelry and chocolate bars, prevents us from learning how to articulate how we feel and what we need. Maybe our elementary school teachers were onto something giving us construction paper, scissors and a pen.

As for me? My plans for Valentine’s Day are spending the evening with my daughter at a friend’s house with pajamas and popcorn. We’ll be avoiding the crowds.

Silva is a high school English teacher and freelance editor. She is managing editor of Sounding Out! and an essayist.