Of made up holidays

Another year, another valentine’s, another excuse that he doesn’t believe in Valentine’s day. Reason? It’s a made up holiday by big corporations to get people spending…blablabla. Of course it is! I know that, the corporations know that, my grandma knows that. But so is Christmas and most holidays we religiously celebrate. Who told you Jesus was born on 25th December? How can you prove it? You can’t, but we still go all out and have readily embraced it. But he draws the line when it comes to Valentine’s? yeah right!

As much as I am a sucker for love, I also know that the whole St. Valentine’s story of some guy who died for some woman or man, I really don’t care to know the story of where or who started this whole Valentine’s business, It’s all a load of horse crap! But it’s here and like everything else we’ve embraced from the west, why not roll with the punches.

True, we don’t need just one day to show or receive love. But what’s wrong with that, even if it’s sort of by force. It’s all for a good cause. Nothing wrong with receiving or giving love. Absolutely nothing. The guys suffer more than the ladies and it’s all because they over think things. Most women, at least the one’s worth keeping around, are not about big grandiose gestures of love unless you’re Kim Kardashian. And you’re not, your life is not some televised show about your glamorous lifestyle. And even if it was, no one cares. Absolutely no one! So move on…..you go to work, come home tired as hell, make dinner if you’re feeling ‘sufficiently philanthropic’, convince the bae (not as glamorous a word according to Google) to massage your feet and plop yourself in front of the telly before dozing off on bae’s chest creating a huge droll puddle on his chest in the process, before dragging yourself to bed….and repeat!

Point is, we’re all busy, with other things without having time to show the other person in your life that you still remember that they aren’t your sibling and actually deserve some more intimate time. Most of us don’t have the luxury of creating date nights, who has the time? Seriously! When I start thinking of the idea of getting ready after a hard day at work, I just can’t. I refuse to can! And to think I’m yet to have kids. So when the kids come? I fear for my love life. People like me (we are more than we like to admit) need someone to force us to make time to show love or receive love. So thank you St. Valentine’s or whoever you are for forcing me and my fellow statues to celebrate love. We need it, if not for Valentine’s I would never want to dress up for a romantic evening.

Valentine’s need not be an expensive, out do each other, spend 2-5 million shillings at Kempinski affair. No, the more intimate, the better. I would rather have a nice home cooked meal over some pretentious dot of a meal at some over priced restaurant, where you get more than 7 forks and knives at once, that you need to wait for someone else to use to know which fork and knife is used for which meal. And at the end of the 7 course meal, you’re still hungry , so when you get home, you warm the leftovers to stop your growling stomach.

It’s easier to eat at home, it’s more comfortable, the bedroom is right there when you’re done and the mood is right for other things wink!wink!. You can eat as much or as little as you want, you have the option of using cutlery that you are actually familiar with or none at all, you can dress up or not and best of all you save on some money. Of course it has to be a bit fancier than any other day. Set the mood.

I remember my first Valentine’s day as an adult. My then boyfriend sent me a humongous bouquet of flowers and it was the high light of my day, hell, my week….. one of my work mates had to escort me to town since the bouquet was too heavy for me to carry by myself. It was a grand gesture that opened my eyes to the joy of feeling appreciated on this particular day. See, until then, Valentines for me was just another day. I didn’t expect anything and never gave anything back. The only glimpse of Valentine’s was when as a teenager fresh out of high school, a good friend got a pair of black thongs from her boyfriend as a gift. Seeing that our mothers were strict to the point that having a boyfriend was an abomination, she(the friend) gave me the thongs to hide for her so that her mum wouldn’t see them and kill her… we laugh about it to this day since it was the first time either one of us had seen thongs that weren’t in magazine catalogs.

Fast forward a few years later and on to my first job, where majority of us were young out of college eager employees with no real responsibilities and could therefore afford to splurge. Valentine’s day was a day where the ladies would compete on the size of bouquet they received. It was about out doing each other. Some would end up sending flowers to themselves… Poor naïve girls we were. The bigger the ‘bounty’ the more you’re loved. At least according to our translation. One time my colleague got a huge cake along with a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers. She had to hire a cab to take her home with her huge ‘bounty’.

That is when occurred to me, Valentine’s is about not only feeling appreciated, but also not feeling left out. When everyone else is being appreciated, it’s good to also feel the love. Like I said it doesn’t really need to be grand, but it needs to be. It just needs to be! Whether it makes sense or not. Fellows stop over thinking it, do what you can afford, do what you can, but do something, anything! Enough with the ‘I don’t believe in Valentine’s crap!’ We don’t either!