Now I understand completely.
After years of questioning, I finally get it…
Valentine’s Day and Halloween are the same!
As you may remember from a 2010
post, I admitted that I have never been a fan of Valentine’s Day (VDay). So really my likening this day to Halloween should not be a surprise at all. If you
don’t have a sense of humor and think of Valentine’s Day as sacred, then this
post is not for you.
For the rest of you who have nothing better to do, here are
the facts…
1 Both
holidays celebrate insanity. Face it. Researchers have found that the brain
activity involved in falling in love is similar to the brain activity when
there is addiction or euphoria. Ergo,
romance / falling in love is a form of insanity. This all makes sense. How else can you explain people
spending an average of $170 on Valentine’s Day? That’s just plain ridiculous, don’t you
agree? But it’s true that some people do
crazy things on both VDay and Halloween and they’re perfectly acceptable, even
encouraged, on both occasions. Halloween
allows individuals to let their hair down and pretend to be someone else via
elaborate costumes, while VDay encourages going over the top in wooing
someone, whether it’s done through a super creative and completely unexpected marriage
proposal, (which incidentally, also sometimes involves putting on elaborate
costumes), or simply through a unique and partially embarrassing date and profession of love. (And here’s a tip. The more embarrassment you put yourself
through, the higher score you get on the love meter.)
2 Both
VDay and Halloween offer a justification to indulge one’s sweet tooth (or is it
addiction really?). The only real
difference is that one holiday prefers orange and black wrapping, while the
other fancies red. When a woman drops
hints that she wants a box of chocolates on Vday, is that not a form of Trick
or Treating? I think I’m onto something
here…..Hmmm……
3 As
I had spoken about in #1, both holidays are days for costumes. People dress up and often times dress up in a
way they normally wouldn’t. I mean this
both literally and figuratively; that on both holidays, some people find
themselves as somebody else, acting in ways they normally don’t. Lovers are encouraged (or forced) to put on
their ‘romantic hats’. Literally
speaking, people also find themselves dressed up more nicely to go out on fancy
dates on Vday. Some women also succumb
to their inner angels…that is, Victoria’s Secret angels, wearing lingerie their
rational minds normally perceive as utterly nonsensical and ridiculously
uncomfortable.
Certainly, one other similarity
is how much Hallmark and other businesses profit from both holidays but that’s true
for other holidays as well, so there’s really no point in highlighting that. Now it’s confession part. What is the most out-of-this world, or at
least out-of-character thing you’ve ever done OR was done to you in the name of
Valentine’s Day? I’m not being elusive
here when I say I don’t have anything to disclose at this time. If you know me, you would completely
understand. I simply did not have a love
life colorful enough to create bizarre Vday anecdotes. What about you? Do you have any remarkable Vday stories to
share?