Valentine’s Day: Heartwarming or Heartbreaking?

Jenna Mertz and Lindsey Morehart, Staff Writer

Jenna: Being single has its advantages, but it also has disadvantages and Valentine’s Day surely gives all of us single people reasons to hate our lives. Correct me if I am wrong, but couples who walk around the school hallways or around the mall or just anywhere near your atmosphere makes you want to gag.

Valentine’s Day is stupid. It’s dumb and it just shouldn’t be a holiday. Hallmark just needed a day where they make extra money on cards and overpriced teddy bears. Godiva chocolates are already ridiculously expensive so the fact that couples go and spend twenty to seventy-five dollars on a box of chocolate is a little ridiculous in my opinion.

No, I am not trying to ruin Valentine’s Day for all those happy couples out there, but seriously? Save your PDA for when you are not in school, it’s annoying and you really aren’t making me or any of my fellow single people feel better about our love lives. I’m not really a holiday-hate person, but Valentine’s Day is just obnoxious. Even when I did have a date for Valentine’s Day, I didn’t enjoy it all that much.

Yes, flowers and chocolates and cute little love letters are really great and perfect and everything but, if you love someone, you shouldn’t just show your love and appreciation for them one day in a year. If you love someone, you need to treat them like royalty every single day, good or bad.

I’ve had the “I’m in love with you,” experience, and it was great, and I am very glad that all of you couples out there can experience it because it is an amazing feeling. I know what it feels like to look at someone and have them take your breath away, and I understand that when that special someone texts you, you smile at their name just being on the screen of your phone; I get that, I really do. But, if you love someone you shouldn’t just show it with beautiful roses and a sweet card, you need to show them that you love them in other ways.

Valentine’s Day is just a commercial holiday. Lovers shouldn’t use February 14 as the only day of the year that they show their sweetie how much they love each other. Valentine’s Day is just like every other day. You need to look at them every single day as if they walk on water. You need to love them and care about them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year – not 24 hours a day and one day out of the year. Show them that you love them, show them you appreciate them and show them how much they mean to you every day.

The point is that Valentine’s Day is like an exclusive club. If you’re not in a relationship, you’re not invited to feel the love.

Have a sweetheart but want to get rid of him or her? Click here to read Jenna and Lindsey’s break up how-to (and how not to).

Lindsey: Valentine’s Day is the best day for couples, without a doubt. Couples can walk arm in arm with fingers entwined and smiles spreading from ear to ear just from being together. That’s why this holiday is so crucial to couples and so full of love.

Not only is Valentine’s Day the perfect excuse to spoil your sweetie, it’s also the day to spoil yourself. Valentine’s Day is something as simple as the second month out of the year and the fourteenth day in; and look, you get to feel special just because of it and nothing else. It’s the same kind of feeling as finding a huge scholarship just because your parents are small business owners.

Anyone can admit to searching for love. Women and men both need to feel special to someone, like the one shining star that burns brighter than any of the two million around it. It’s the simple satisfaction of belonging to someone who loves you just as much as you love them. Valentine’s Day is advertised as a day to spoil the one person you love. But in reality, it’s much more than that. It’s the day to give your all.

Chocolates, teddy bears and fragrant flowers are the most popular and classic way to show your sweetie just how much they mean to you. But these gifts aren’t the best part of Valentine’s Day. The best part is hearing your darling tell you that they love you. The three words that make anyone’s heart skip a beat make Valentine’s Day the most memorable day of the year.

The holiday lets everyone slow down the pace of their busy day and feel the romance in the air. It’s almost like living in Paris for a day. It’s a day dedicated to the purpose of life; for what is life without love? Couples have the chance to breath in more than the daily stress and frenzy of life and take the day to love their darling like they always should.

Valentine’s Day doesn’t need to be a sacred bond shared between only couples. Some of the best gifts are given by family. I know that the most exciting part of Valentine’s Day, for me, is opening a big box of chocolates, clothes, and soft teddy bears that my grandmother sends me every year. And I have always loved the early morning breakfasts that my father makes me in the morning.

But as important as family is, Valentine’s Day is best spent with a significant other. The money spent on fancy dinners and adorable presents is well worth the feelings of connectedness that the day brings out in couples. Holding hands while walking around on a normal date is sweet. But holding hands over the table at a nice restaurant with a candle burning and eyes locked on each other on February 14 is marvelous. And that’s the whole point of Valentine’s Day.

The purpose of Valentine’s Day isn’t spending money or being cheesy. The purpose is spending precious moments together with the sole intent of sharing your feelings with the one you love. Those three simple words engulfing you and your beloved’s entire day makes it hard not to love Valentine’s Day at its best. The smile that spreads on your sweetheart’s face is the most miraculous and perfect smile you’ve ever seen. Not only is that smile the one that you fell in love with in the beginning, but on Valentine’s Day, it’s the one that says it all. I love you.