View from the North 40: Hmphy Valentine's Day to one and all

Valentine’s Day is one of the oddest holidays of the year.

I can remember back in grade school being required to fill out little Valentine’s cards for all my classmates and thinking that this was one of the stupidest, most awkward things I ever had to do. I asked my mom when I was in first grade why I had to give cards to all the kids, including the kids I didn’t know, the ones who were mean and the ones I had no thoughts on at all.

Navigating social norms is difficult enough for 6-year-olds, especially us odd ones, and my mom took the time to explain that I was doing it because I had to, so I better stop whining about it and get it done.

Allrighty then.

Left to my own devises to figure how I could do that in good conscience, I divided my standard grade-school Valentine’s card kit into piles of special nice, politely friendly, totally generic and ugly generic cards. Then I painstakingly worked my way down my list of classmates, assigning and signing the cards as befit each recipients’ status in my life.

I had a system, but I never did warm up to the holiday, especially later in life if I had a boyfriend on Feb. 14.

In fact, fast forward 17 years, when my husband and I were still planning our wedding, and he surprised me with a sweet note about how he’d never had a Valentine before and this was, therefore, a special day for him with his first Valentine’s Day sweetheart. So I took the time to say something like, “Really? That’s so sweet. And weird. I mean unexpected weird — not weird-weird, because we’re in love and getting married, and, um, thank you.”

It was an all-natural awkwardness, with no artificial sweeteners.

Each Valentine’s for about seven or eight years, my husband acknowledged the holiday, albeit with enthusiasm that gradually diminished toward my level of comfort. The last year he did anything special, he came home and gave me a flower. So I took the time to exclaim “Oh. A flowerrr … . You got me a flower? How, um, thank you.”

To which he laughed and then told me that the flowers were handed out in the office building he was doing some computer work in so they gave him one, too. I was all, “Thank gawd. I thought you spent money on this when you could’ve gotten me some horse tack or feed or something. I mean, if you were going to spend money. A free flower, though, that’s kind of all right.”

I put it in water.

Then one Valentine’s Day I realized we had, for I didn’t know how many years, just barely been remembering to say “Happy Valentine’s” to each other in passing. I was OK with that, but just a little sad, too, that I had killed his Valentine’s spirit, dead.

At this point, we wouldn’t even remember the day existed if it weren’t plastered all over the stores and the TV.

That said, some post Christmas Valentine’s Day thing in the store prompted me to comment to my husband about how he surprised me that first year with his sweet note. “I didn’t do that,” he said. What? We exchanged a few yes-you-dids and no-I-didn’ts, but I dropped the subject. It’s Valentine’s, so no biggie.

Except, surprise, some weeks later I am still a wee bit disturbed that he didn’t remember. How weird is that? Why would someone who doesn’t care about a holiday be a little hurt that her husband doesn’t remember putting in the effort to make her feel uncomfortably, slightly pleased about his acknowledgment of said holiday?

Now I’m as down on Valentine’s Day as my first-grade self was, and my brain keeps noticing when others are equally disenchanted with the holiday, even in the news.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that India’s government is pushing its people to focus their Valentine’s attention on their reverence for cows rather than what officials feel is irreverent lust for each other.

The Animal Welfare Board of India, a country with a vast majority of Hindus who worship cows, said in a release Wednesday that “hugging cows will bring emotional richness and increase individual and collective happiness,” the AP reported.

The article also says that India, which had started to become more economically liberal in the 1990s, has in the past few years become extremely nationalist with less and less division between religion and state.

Devout Hindus, the AP article says, feel that the Western holiday goes against traditional Indian values, prompting Hindu hardliners to raid shops in Indian cities, burn cards and gifts, and chase hand-holding couples out of restaurants and parks.

That seems a little extreme, even by my standards.

UPI News reported Feb. 2, that Animal Friends Humane Society in Hamilton, Ohio, is holding a Valentine’s Day fundraiser and “for a $5 donation (the shelter) will write your Ex’s name in a litter box and give it to the cats, to let them do what they do best!”

That also seems extreme to me.

I mean, c’mon, I could write my Valentine’s-denying husband’s name in our own cat’s litter box for free. And then spend $5 on some horse tack or feed or something.

——

A girl’s gotta have priorities at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .