I don’t like Valentine’s Day. Don’t get me wrong, I like love. I love love. I love being in love. I love my family and my friends. I love reading about love, singing songs about love, watching movies about love. I love writing books about love.

But a calendar-mandated day of love? Blech. Whatever the Valentine’s Day equivalent of Scrooge is, that’s me. The anti-Cupid.

Maybe it started the year I got called away from my first Valentine’s Day with my then-boyfriend/now-husband to work overnight, tracking a tradeshow shipment stuck in international customs, while my job hung in the balance. Possibly it was during my kids’ elementary school years when Valentine’s Day felt like a week-long Hallmark Channel crafting competition sponsored by Pinterest. Perhaps it’s the gruesome origin story of St. Valentine, or my deep-rooted suspicion that every person working on Valentine’s Day spits in the food of those celebrating it. 

But what I think it really is, is that I dislike the grand gesture-ness of Valentine’s Day. I believe the interesting stuff -the real demonstrations of love- shows up on the other 364 days a year. Real love is in the little details, like someone dropping you off at the curb while they go park the car in the rain, or cooking your favorite meal (and doing the dishes after). Love is silly inside jokes and getting up to feed the cat so your person can sleep in. It’s the daily gestures, the showing up, the internal sigh and eye roll (okay, sometimes that’s external) before saying “Sure, I’d love to (fill in the blank)” because even though you hate whatever it is, you know it makes them happy.

My disdain for Valentine’s Day even spills over onto my characters. Corinne, the MC of SOMETHING BETTER has this to say:

I was born on February 15th. Having a birthday the day after Valentine's day was a celebratory no man's land. You didn't get the day off from work or school, and everyone was either too over-sugared and tapped out from the night before or, alternately, too bitter and resentful to get in the mood for another party.

Meanwhile, Ava, the daughter of the bride in my current work in progress, WEDDING DAY, feels this way about romantic gestures:

Her wedding to Tim had been straightforward; their reception as frilly as a business luncheon. None of this crazy over-the-top romantic woo-woo crap.

Grand gestures are lovely, but they’re not real. That’s why the second half of Into the Woods is so good. “I was raised to be charming, not faithful.” says the Prince to the Baker’s Wife. It’s why the end of The Graduate is a classic. It’s what people do following the grand gesture that tells the real story.

In short, I think Valentine’s Day emphasizes the wrong thing. Love isn’t a day; it’s a choice made continuously. We should celebrate the thoughtful, sustainable, often hilarious, every day ways of expressing love. So this holiday, my family and I will settle in for our annual “Least Romantic Dinner & Movie” combo -our 2021 selection is chicken enchiladas and 1917- and toast the little things. It’s not grand, but it is us. And that, to me, is so romantic.

Xoxo y’all!