We need a holiday in February.
In the US, we have Thanksgiving in November, Christmas a month later, and New Year's Day a week after that. So we greet the darkness of midwinter with a vision of a glowing fireplace and wassail and Santa in the Coca-cola red garb and the reality of stolen moments of togetherness in-between the Christmas crowds and the ugly sweater office parties. But fantasized versions of Christmas are good; our movies reflect the family Christmas we need, and instruct us to make our own families and love the people we have.
Then there's the time from after New Year's until spring, the hardest part of the winter. Ice and slush smeared with cinder and mud, with no red ribbon or colorful lights breaking the monotony.
What about Valentine's Day? you ask. Valentine's Day, as long as I have lived, has been a show of lording privilege over others. In grade school, the children all decorate boxes for others who stuff valentines in. If the teacher doesn't require kids have valentines for everyone, then the popular children get valentines and the unpopular ones do not. If the teacher requires that children give everyone valentines, then the unpopular children get ugly, uncomplimentary, and sometimes literally snotty valentines. As adults, the haves display their Valentine's booty on social media, and the have-nots -- don't.
Maybe we should make Valentine's Day a real holiday, where we show love by giving? Gather our friends and have a good lunch before we put red bows on the dogs at the humane society and walk them; give manicures and pedicures to the women at the senior home; clean out our cupboards for the soup kitchen and give our old dishes to the women's shelter.
And those flowers? Give them to someone who would not get a flower otherwise. A friend of mine gave me a white rose in my office one year, in a time when I hadn't dated for years. The best February ever.
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