Pink, red and white is everywhere right now. Much like half eaten candy canes that I am finding around the house (I'm looking at you, S) Valentine's decorations are the sorry, slightly furry leftovers of Christmas. Valentine's stuff is all over. Except for a few locally owned chains that are pushing Mardi Gras, Valentine's Day is the next retail holiday push. Store away your Christmas stuff in our red and green totes, and buy these pink and white Valentine's Day Totes to store this Valentine crap we're selling! Ugh.
This is what Wikipedia has to say about Valentine's Day: St. Valentine's Day is a liturgical holiday for Valintinus who was performing prohibited marriages, ministering to the persecuted Christians, and doing other stuff generally uncool with the Romans. He supposedly healed his imprisoner's daughter, and left her a note before being executed signed "From your Valentine." This sounds a little pat to me, but I'm no expert. A timeline, if you will:
- The age of chivalry heightened this into an idealized romantic love. Amorous courters would offer flowers, gifts, confections to their lovers in knights and maidens tymes.
- In the 1800s, books were published as guides for young men to write verse for their lasses. Emo was born.
- In the 1800s, Brits got the postal system going which meant that valentines could be sent anonymously. Hence, things got really saucy. This was the first drunk emailing.
- Loving all this unsolicited, free word-porn, the popularity of valentines, and thus, the holiday itself surged in the mid 1800s. *See entry on Fifty Shades of Gray.
- Although the Brits had been sending valentines for a while, the first US mass-produced paper lace cards were made by one Esther Howland. Since 2001, the US Greeting Card Assn (could there be such a thing?) has been giving out the annual Esther Howland Award for greeting card visionary. Or, as the trophy's known: Thanks for paying our bills, Ms. Esther.
Superstores dedicate aisles to it. Pier 1 sells artsy pink and white. Target's got your chic pink and white. WalMart has your budget pink and white. Dollar Tree has last year's pink and white. Dirt Cheap has the pink and white that nobody else wanted.
While the historical significance of the holiday may be a blend of martyology and lore, the celebration has distilled into something more palatable to the average American: consumerism.
But I feel that both the snowballed legend and the current conspicuous celebration are overlooking a crucial element of the holiday's evolution: its proximity to Christmas.
St. Valentine's Day occurs exactly 51 days after Christmas. Coincidentally, and there are no actual studies to corroborate this, it takes 51 days for the human body to completely eradicate residual familial/in-law induced toxicity. That includes internal toxicity and any external crazy absorbed through environmental sources.
It takes 51 days for you not to wake up with that horrible dream where you're living at home again after a series of massive life failures.
51 days days to stop thinking of yourself as a treed cat.
51 days to stop the Pavlovian desire for vodka when you hear the word houseguest.
51 days to stop your left eyelid from twitching when you hear a child whining.
51 days to rid the godawful stench of artificial cinnamon/evergreen from your nose.
51 days for you to eliminate the PTSD when you see red and green in the discount bin.
51 days for you to not to gag when you smell turkey and/or ham.
51 days for you and your husband to start speaking to each other after that big fight over where Aunt Betty was going to sleep.
51 days for you to start speaking to your kids who fought nonstop with their cousins for 2 whole weeks.
51 days for you to start speaking to Uncle Al who not so subtly suggested you get your son "tested."
In short, it takes from Christmas Day to Valentine's Day to remember how and whom to love again. Valentine's Day represents a way in which the Darwinian impulse to survive seeped into civilization. We need a day to remind us to love those people around us. We need to be reminded that without our parents who made us crazy, we would be left unprotected and die. We need pink and white to remind us that our husbands weren't being passive aggressive when they "forgot" cranberry sauce at the grocery store 6 times as soon as he heard your mom was on her way. Without sparkly cards and sappy poetry, we'd never forgive them, have make-up sex and perpetuate the species. And we would die. If not for the endearing popsicle stick and paper doily nursery school crafts, we would never want to take care of our ungrateful, ill behaved, 'when are you going back to school, go out and and play in the blizzard' children. And, we as a species, would die.
Pink and white is a primal code in our brain to repair ourselves from the emotional and physical chaos of Christmas. It is a holiday that resonates with our collective desire to love, despite the massive family dysfunction we all have. Pink and white is an emotional band-aid. A salve for the deep scars, both benign and neurotic that we all bear from spending the first 18 years of our lives with crazy people who we didn't choose as housemates. Tacky chocolates and pastries are the panacea to our marriages with people we love, we chose and we still choose to love because they were unlike all others. (Which, in hindsight might have been more of a symptom than an asset.) Thus, the holiday serves as a sociological excuse to fulfill our genetic impulse to survive, our psychic need for love.
No comments:
Post a Comment