Every February, heart decorations appear, our local convenience store is filled up with boxes of chocolate, and talk of love is all around. Valentine’s Day is a time to share our appreciation and love with those around us. However, the purpose of the holiday has been lost due to consumerism.
Valentine’s Day originated from the Roman festival of Lupercalia, which was celebrated from Feb. 13 to Feb. 15. However, this celebration differs from the romantic holiday we now celebrate on the 14th, marked by the exchange of Hallmark cards, chocolates, and flowers. Lupercalia was seen as rather violent, with the sacrificing of farm animals, but was then developed into a romantic holiday with the help of writers like Chaucer and Shakespeare. The holiday became popularized in Europe, and with it came the creation of cards as a token of love. Centuries later, the Industrial Revolution caused once personal, homemade cards to be replaced by factory-made ones. This soon made the once-sweet holiday into one that favors capitalist exploitation.
Valentine’s Day—a holiday meant for showing your love and gratitude to friends, family, and lovers—has been transformed into a day for giving and receiving gifts. Rather than the personal handmade cards people made centuries ago, it has now been reduced to buying mass-produced cards, a box of chocolates, and a bouquet of roses. According to Jamie Lee Taete, a writer and photographer for Vice, “U.S. consumers are expected to spend $27.4 billion on Valentine’s Day this year, with an average per-person spend of $196.31.” Society has made it so those in relationships are always pressured to spend money on passionless and tacky gifts. So rather than celebrating, they are buying wasteful gifts. Online shopping is at an all-time high as 45% of Valentine’s gifts will be bought from the internet, and 37% will be from Amazon, which is one of the many ways Valentine’s Day destroys the environment.
On Valentine’s Day, 36 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolate are bought. Although the chocolate inside the box is usually eaten, the box will be thrown away and most likely end up in a dump or in nature. Valentine’s Day is not only a heartless materialistic holiday but also destroys our environment. Roses, a depiction of the holiday itself, are one of Valentine’s Day’s most environmentally harmful aspects. Most of the flowers— specifically roses— flown into the U.S. for Valentine’s Day are from South America. 15,000 tons of flowers from Ecuador entered the U.S. via airplanes in 2018 just for Valentine’s Day. The amount of greenhouse gas emissions these planes produce is startling, with an article from Vox stating, “those three weeks of flower delivery flights burn approximately 114 million liters of fuel, emitting approximately 360,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.” Flowers are not the only product being imported for Valentine’s Day, as chocolates, jewelry, and more are brought worldwide, increasingly destroying our environment.
The premise of Valentine’s Day is not in itself evil. However, the Industrial Revolution, along with other factors, has made the holiday meaningless, as its only purpose was to provide more money for big corporations.
