Perspective

On Feb. 14 every year, Valentine’s Day is celebrated with flowers, chocolates, candy and other items.

Cupid is associated with the holiday because he is the god of desire, erotic love and affection. The legend is he can shoot love arrows to make people fall in love with each other. Over the years, Valentine’s Day has expanded to include not just romantic love but also friendships and family love.

But for the most part, Valentine’s Day is overdone, and people have started to see it as a stupid or pointless holiday for multiple reasons.

One of the holiday’s drawbacks is that it is commercialized and expensive. According to the National Retail Federation, “Americans were expected to spend a record-breaking $27.5 billion on Valentine’s Day gifts and events in 2025, with each consumer spending an average of $188.81.” According to Statista, last year almost $6.5 billion was spent on jewelry alone for Valentine’s Day.

Personal debt is growing – especially among college students — so maybe we shouldn’t encourage people to feel obligated to spend money on a holiday.

Then, too, maybe love shouldn’t be connected to commodities at all. That may be one reason Valentine’s Day isn’t as popular as other holidays.

Already, when a couple goes on a date, both people feel pressured to spend money on cards, flowers, gifts and such just for one day. That is a complete waste of money.

Another drawback is the idea of not being included. If you’re not in a relationship, what does the holiday mean? In a 2024 New York Times article, Angeline Close Scheinbaum, associate professor of marketing at Clemson University’s Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business, said, “Marketers alienating entire groups of consumers — not only is it bad for society, but it’s bad business in general.”

Not only has Valentine’s Day made people feel ostracized, but it has also lost its true meaning compared to other popular holidays such as Halloween or Christmas.

In fact, there is essentially no point to it anymore. As Mark D. White, chair of the philosophy department at College of Staten Island/CUNY, wrote in a Psychology Today article, “…I feel that it waters down the romantic focus of the holiday to use it to celebrate all types of relationships and love, not just romantic ones. We have other holidays to recognize many of the other people in our lives and how we relate to them.”

So it is possible to devote time to demonstrating love, support and affection toward a potential lover, and that applies to any couple who don’t want to go into debt.