Today is Valentine’s Day, and it also happens to be #ArchiveDay on Twitter, through which bloggers like myself share whatever blog posts (preferably older posts, hence “archive”) to drive some traffic to our site. I can’t help but notice a trend in the posts I’m seeing today.

To summarize: Valentine’s Day is stupid.

And here I was, thinking I was in the minority.

Maybe I am. We bloggers tend to be a rather noisy bunch. But I don’t think I am.

To analyze the VD (ha. There’s an ironic acronym for you.) situation, you have to break the population into three groups: singles, long time significant others, and newbies.

Singles who don’t like being single tend to hate Valentine’s Day because it shines a glaring, unavoidable spotlight on their situation. All the commercials show a woman opening a jewelry box. Flowers are bought in abundance. Chocolate is marked up 30%, so the singles can’t even drown their sorrow in confections without getting ripped off. Lame.

Long time significant others (I’m part of this group) kind of get behind Valentine’s Day, but it’s a half-assed effort for most of them. My husband is not one of the half-assers. I am. He buys me cards and flowers and is all kinds of romantic. I, thinking Valentine’s Day is rather stupid, thank him for the cards and flowers and buy him a movie he likes. Lucky for me, he just wants me around when the family goes to do things instead of holing up behind my computer performing writerly-type tasks. So I’ll do that.

See, my fellow half-assers and I don’t understand why this day is selected to be special. You would majorly suck in your relationship if you only chose this day to show your SO you love them. Unless your anniversary or some special relationship thing happened on Valentine’s Day, it seems silly and expensive, especially if your anniversary is close to it.

Which brings me to the third group: newbies. These are the newly dating couples who might have a legit reason to get excited about Valentine’s Day. It’s like the prom. Everything is new and exciting. Lots of couples get engaged on Valentine’s Day, which probably makes it easier for everyone to remember. But lots of others get engaged on non-Valentine’s Day. My husband proposed on the Fourth of July, and no marked up flowers were involved.

Valentine’s Day isn’t going anywhere. I love my husband dearly, and I don’t reserve Valentine’s Day to show him. There is a day around Valentine’s that I do look forward to, however – February 15, AKA 50% Off Chocolate Day. Who wants to celebrate that day with me?