When I think of Valentines Day I immediately think, jeez what a great excuse for women to ask for more gifts and men to be pressured into getting them because we have to “declare” our love or some cheesy, consumer driven garbage like that. I also think of all the good deals that stores will have on leftover candy, heart shaped items and cards. I also wonder if celebrating a day that is named after a saint is in fact a bit on the avodah zara side of things and is better left as an ordinary work day with a lot of flowers being brought to your office, with cheesy love letters hanging off to the side, comparable to shalach manos being left outside your door on purim, with similar cheesy notes reading this is from the Mermelsteins instead of “I love you my honey bunches of oats”.
To me Valentines Day is a big business sponsored holiday in order to get those people back into the stores who haven’t been shopping since the other corporate sponsored holiday known as Thanksgiving-New Years- after new years sale- to the slow time between the week after new years until valentines day. What better excuse to get men off their butts and down to the mall to spend some money before everyone goes into tax mode, then by making their lovers think that if things are not bought for this specific day, then all is off and they are not in love. Oh and just because it has a heart on it, don’t mean he loves you, it means that he doesn’t want to take the couch if you know what I mean.
I wish I could abbreviate valentines day, but then it becomes VD, so I passed that opportunity up. But anyway, is this holiday for Jews. Some may argue that its tradition like Thanksgiving- which is more of a farming related holiday to give farmers a boost before the winter slowdown. You know people loading up on root veggies and turkey. So any way, valentines day, actually its kind of funny that the abbreviation is VD- being that many babies are conceived on valentines day and lots of other nookie is going down undoubtedly causing much VD.
So back to the point, should valentines day be celebrated as tradition, or should it be treated as a religious holiday and be forsaken by the Jews similar to things such as Easter, or maybe it will take on the status of Halloween, one of those holidays that yeshiva urban legends are passed around about and everyone assumes that Jews were burned at the stake in honor of that holiday. I am quite sure that Jews were burned at the stake on Valentines Day as well as Halloween- just because prior to 1900 they didn’t really need an excuse to start a pogrom. Ah, those Europeans just loved the Jews back in the day, I hear they still do.
I personally do not celebrate Halloween and Valentines Day, nor do I eat Chinese food on Christmas. It just doesn’t seem right to me as an orthodox Jew to try and become one of them- nah its not that bad- its semi philosophical and mostly economical, though I love Thanksgiving, stuffing and cranberry sauce with walnuts in it- give me warm fuzzy feelings.
I know it will get rough with the comment slinging, but don’t worry I am “working” a job today which puts me with unrestricted online access all day long.
With that said what do you think about Jews celebrating Valentines Day or general feelings?