Does Valentine's Day revolve around a canned greeting card and as many overpriced roses as you can carry? Or just expensive jewelry and chocolate?
Countless stressed men will be scurrying around with armloads of these clichéd gifts this weekend, fear of the doghouse clouding any meaningful thought on the matter. Nobody is saying that spending time with your significant other or expressing love are wrong, but is a scripted act of anticipated affection really the answer?
No, says New York-based life coach Jay Cataldo, who is leading a movement to trash Valentine's Day in favor of more personalized expressions of meaningful feeling and sincere emotion.
"The biggest problem with Valentine's Day is that you can't really be romantic when being romantic is completely expected," Cataldo said. "So the expectations behind the holiday doom it to failure."
That's why Cataldo has advanced the idea of a new, personalized holiday to mitigate expectations or excessive fanfare motivated by the fear of being compared to someone else. Each year, it would be celebrated on a different day of the creator's choosing in order to do away with the traditional predictability of Valentine's Day.
That would be just fine with Allie Strong, a sophomore majoring in retail merchandising at the University of Minnesota.
"I would prefer the day to be a random day throughout the year because I would rather something come ... out of the blue rather than be given a Hallmark holiday, Valentine's Day card and a box of chocolates," Strong said.
College students in general tend to be skeptical of the exploitation of love for profit and question the inherent value of such a holiday.
