The Christmas decorations have hit the clearance bins and been replaced by red and pink hearts, cheesy candy and lovey-dovey décor.
Seriously, can't we all just get a moment of peace?
All of this shuffling from one holiday to the next has become quite tiresome — not to mention that Valentine's Day isn't even about showing love to your significant other. There are 365 days in a year, yet Valentine's Day is apparently the ONE day you're supposed to actually show it.
Excuse me, but no. If you actually loved the other person, you would get her or him flowers and chocolates every day or take them out to a nice romantic dinner.
You would perform some gesture that shows them you care.
Valentine's Day is nothing more than an over-commercialized holiday.
Couples feel the need to be overly handsy and mushy in public. It's a holiday, people, not a free for all to jump on each other like it's Animal Planet.
Do us all a favor and get a room before you get arrested for public indecency.
I don't want to see you feed your "snuggle bear" gross-tasting candy hearts. No.
Or the opposite happens and men end the relationship so they don't have to spend $10 on a cheap piece of jewelry or some crappy chocolates that taste like dirt.
This is the one day that pressures relationships by putting unrealistic expectations on it.
Flowers are the perfect gift for this holiday, because they are extremely expensive, you can wait until the last minute to remember them, and much like the relationship, they are slowly dying.
Don't even get me started on all of the romantic gestures. People light 50 candles like they're trying to perform a séance, buy expensive champagne and throw rose petals all over like they're planting a flower garden in the room.
That's sweet, but if you go all out one year, you are expected to do the same the next.
Actually, you are expected to top it.
Women get upset when the man does something elaborate and thoughtful one year and orders a pizza and wants to stay in the next. That doesn't mean the romance is dead; just the opposite, in fact.
Valentine's Day is just another day, so let's not treat it as if the fate of the free world depends on it and run around like a lovesick puppy that leaves others wondering, what's wrong with people?
Haley Pitto of Lodi is a San Joaquin Delta College student and a part-time copy editor at the Lodi News-Sentinel. This column is reprinted from the Collegian, the campus newspaper at Delta.
Joanne Bobin posted at 8:08 am on Sat, Feb 16, 2013.
I'm so glad that Mr. Kinderman has taken it upon himself to be Haley Pitto's pyschologist, declaring her "lonely" and "angry."
I believe her column was meant to be satirical and I think she pulled it off quite well, hitting many of the pathetic points of this overly commercialized "holiday" which, by the way, celebrates a man who is historically symbolic of "courtly love."
For those unfamiliar with this term, used often in erotic novels, it is the historic tradition of the nobility to have sexual relations with one who is neither your husband or your wife - what we casually call today, "having an affair."
Jerome Kinderman posted at 8:05 pm on Thu, Feb 14, 2013.
Me thinks poor Ms. PItto of Lodi was extremely lonely today; and that's quite sad. It's her anger however that causes me to take pause. While I agree that the majority of our holidays are now excuses to get others to spend money (auto dealers having Memorial Day sales for instance) like Mr. Lauchland suggests, they're only days set aside for reflection if one desires to do so.
I am much more incensed over the extreme morphing of Christmas into the uber-commercialized day that it was never intended to be than the 14th day of February when the candy and jewelry industries get a slight economic boost.
Ted Lauchland posted at 1:58 pm on Thu, Feb 14, 2013.
Relationships are not perfect. Marriages are not perfect - just progressive. After thirty four years of marriage and Valentines Days I now know that it is simply a day of reflection . A day to stop and smell the roses - so to speak . So - we do .
Spring is on it's way.