When I do something, I want to make sure that I have a good reason for doing it. I try not to do anything without being able to defend it from several different perspectives. That includes Valentine’s Day. So where does Valentine’s Day come from, what’s the point, why do people handle it like they do, and what do I think about it?

First of all, as anyone could assume, it’s named after St. Valentine, a priest in third-century Rome. The emperor of the time, Claudius the Second, outlawed marriages because single men make better soldiers than husbands. Valentine saw this as unjust and he continued marrying young lovers in secret, until he was eventually discovered and thrown in prison. As the legend goes, he fell in love with a young woman who visited him in prison, and when he was put to death he left behind a letter for her which was signed “Your Valentine”, thus starting the tradition. A couple centuries later the Catholic Church made Valentine’s Day an official holiday in attempts to christianize and replace a pagan holiday that was around that time already. So the reasoning behind it seems good, for sure.

So what’s the point? It’s a nice little way to celebrate someone that you’re in love with. It’s good to show appreciation for the woman or man that you’re in love with. Make them feel special. Take time for them. That’s great. Although, of course, as with most holidays now, it’s been commercialized to death. Businesses use it as an excuse to sell heart-shaped-everything, chocolate, flowers, balloons, couples specials, and all other types of tchotchkes. Of course this is capitalist America, so the companies certainly aren’t to blame for working towards success. Maybe it’s not a perfect system but that’s the system we’re working with and it is what it is. However, we as individuals all make choices of how to treat this holiday, and we don’t each need to celebrate it by buying into the commercialism anyway. If you want to buy your sweetheart flowers in honor of them, your love, and out of memory of St. Valentine, then go right ahead, there’s nothing wrong with that. Where there starts to be a problem is if you do it just out of tradition rather than love. Obligation shouldn’t be the motivation for acts of affection.

Now, especially in an age of social media, it’s especially tempting to perform big showy acts of affection for attention or competition, because it’s what we’re “supposed to do” rather than out of love. People brag about what their significant others get them and we post pictures from our dates on Instagram and Facebook and brag about how in love we are, but is that really the point? It’s great if you’re in love and you want to talk about it, but it’s not so great to just want to talk about it. Love’s for the two people involved, not an audience. We shouldn’t need to post about how great our date was, we should just enjoy the moment with the person we love. Of course, if you’re just an extraverted person and you love sharing your life, that’s okay! You can do that! But it’s really easy to compare our lives to those of the people around us, and when we only share the best parts of it and try to show off, we’re missing the point.

To those of us who are spending this day who aren’t in relationships, there’s nothing wrong with that. You don’t need to be in a relationship to be loved, though, and that’s important to remember. You’re not worse because you don’t have someone else. Don’t stress out about it just because it feels like everyone else in the world around you is in love. You’re going to attract the people who are like you, so in your time alone just try to focus on being the type of person you would want to attract, be the best that you can. It’s weird how it seems to work, but once you focus on making yourself better and when you stop looking for somebody else to complete you, that’s when you’ll probably end up finding someone just right. Until then, we can at least all remember the great story of a man who risked his life to preserve the institution of marriage. So for those of you who have someone special to share it with and those who are waiting for the right person, happy Valentine’s Day.