Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Sweets for the Sweet

 
Hello, Dear Readers.  It’s good to see you.

Just the other day, I was listening to the old Van Halen song “Why Can’t This Be Love,” and I realized that Valentine’s Day is once again upon us.  Now, I have to admit that Valentine’s Day isn’t one of my favorite holidays, but then again, that’s probably why it’s such an endless source of fascination for me.  I tend to be much more interested in the things I don’t like than in the things that I do, and I think most people are like that.  I mean, I’ve heard people prattle on and on about how the last order of spicy chicken wings they ate tasted like they’d been marinated in stomach acid, and I’ve seen people derail entire dinner parties with minute descriptions of how reading about Lindsay Lohan’s latest escapades left them with little more than a raging headache and a markedly uncomfortable bloated feeling.  But when it comes to things people like, they usually just go, “Yeah, I thought that was good,” and that’s pretty much the end of the story.

I don’t know, though, that I’d say I actually dislike Valentine’s Day.  I’m just not that into it.  That might be because I’m single, but really, I think it’s more because I just find the whole thing kind of confusing.  And personally, any kind of unnecessary confusion just annoys me.  I mean, Valentine’s Day just brings up a bunch of questions that, frankly, I’d rather not have to waste my time thinking about.  And yet, from at least the beginning of February to the actual day itself, they’re almost impossible to get away from.  So this year, I decided to just tackle them head on in the hopes that some little bit of clarity might emerge.

Now, probably the biggest question that this wonderful day of love generates is a fairly simple one:  why do men seem to need to be reminded at least three times a day that Valentine’s Day is coming up?  Are they really that forgetful?  I mean, if they are, why does anyone give them important things like mortgages and jobs and children?  After all, these are things whose successful maintenance usually requires some degree of memory. 

But if you judged the ability of men to remember anything based on the sheer number of ads reminding them that Valentine’s Day is coming up, you’d expect them to walk into their houses, have their wives ask, “Did you pick up the kids from swimming lessons?” and reply, “What kids?”  “You were supposed to pick them up after you got off work.”  “I have a job?”  “Well, how do you think we’re paying for this house?”  “We have to pay to live here?”  If guys were even half as forgetful as TV leads you to believe they are, it would be amazing if they could find their way home at night.  Hell, it would be amazing if they could even remember that they had homes.

But beyond just forgetting about the holiday, if you just go by what you see in the media, selecting the Valentine’s gift itself is some sort of mysterious experience that men have to be guided carefully through, and that brings up my second question:  are guys really that inept when it comes to buying presents?  It’s like the media is saying that if TV didn’t tell guys what to get their loved ones, there’s just no telling what they might show up with.  “Here, my dearest Valentine, I brought you this candy and these gifts.”  “Oh, chocolate-covered cherries!  How delicious!  And what’s this?  A case of beer and a shotgun?  What the hell is this about?”  And from there, things just turn ugly.  Really, really ugly.  I mean, as far as the media is concerned, guys aren’t just forgetful; apparently they’re stupid, too. 

The funny thing is that at least according to TV, there are really only two levels of Valentine’s Day gifts to choose from:  expensive jewelry and stuff you can buy at the drug store.  So, it’s not like getting a present is exactly rocket science.  If you go the expensive jewelry route, you just walk into a jewelry store, plunk down all your cash on the counter, and say, “I want to biggest, sparkliest thing this money will buy.  And could you gift wrap it for me?”  It’s so easy that it hardly even requires a brain.  And apparently, that’s the angle the jewelry stores are playing—it’s so easy even a man can do it.

Of course, going the “stuff you can buy at the drug store” route is a little harder.  After all, if you just walk into a drug store and plunk your money down on the counter, one of the employees will probably grab it and run away. So, you really do have to do a tiny bit of shopping first, and that can be a bit of a challenge.  I mean, you’re buying a Valentine’s Day gift that expresses your deep love and true devotion at a place that sells cough syrup and tampons.  So, you know, it’s a tricky situation, and your relative level of sincerity is always a bit questionable.  But then again, all the Valentine’s Day stuff is usually in one aisle, so at least you get a little guidance. And what you can’t fake in sincerity you can often make up for with sheer bulk.

One thing you rarely see Valentine’s TV ads for, though, is candy.  But that’s likely because as children, we're sort of pre-programmed to associate candy with Valentine’s Day.  That is, for most kids, the holidays break down into two categories:  present holidays and candy holidays.  Any holiday that doesn’t involve one of those two things isn’t a holiday to a kid.  It’s just a day when you have to dress up and maybe go to church, and then you have to hang out with a bunch of your cousins from Iowa who you don’t even really know very well and wouldn’t be likely to befriend on any other occasion. 

As far as the kid-recognized holidays go, though, Christmas and your birthday are present holidays.  Halloween, the Fourth of July, Easter, and Valentine’s Day are candy holidays.  Of course, if you’re Jewish, Hanukkah is your big present holiday, and Passover has to be a candy holiday, although, frankly, except for the occasional macaroon, it’s not that great of a deal as far as the treats go.  But no matter what faith you’re raised in, Valentine’s Day is a candy holiday.  Kids might give out Valentines at school, but trust me, it’s got nothing to do liking someone.  It’s all about the candy.  I mean, if some kid gives you a Valentine that doesn’t have a little candy heart in it, then it’s just a big gyp.  

So, it’s not a huge surprise that even men, as feckless and confused as they may be, don’t need big signs telling them to get some candy.  Apparently, once they’ve been nagged and hounded and led by the nose to the store, their pre-programming kicks in, and in a way, it’s probably not all that surprising that a large percentage of Valentine’s Day gifts come from drug stores.  I mean, around Valentine’s Day, drug stores usually have big signs outside that just say, “We have candy!”  So the guys go in, grab the treats, and then proceed to lurch through the aisles in their complete ineptitude as gift-buyers snatching up anything wrapped in red foil that isn’t edible or in a liquid form. 

Of course, one thing that you almost never see in the media are ads for what women should give men for Valentine’s Day, and that’s probably because the basic expectation is that women are going to give the…”gift of themselves” shall we say.  But that brings up my third question:  on any other given night of the year, are women really that unwilling to have sex with their partners?  I mean, as a general rule, do they really need to be bribed into it like that?  Is that what Valentine’s Day is actually all about—forgetful, stupid men bribing otherwise unwilling women into having sex with them?  Well, yes, if you watch television, that’s exactly what Valentine’s Day is about.  Personally, I don’t know why anyone would want to participate in it.

And certainly, a fair number of people don’t participate in the Valentine’s Day festivities, not because they’ve taken the inordinate amount of time to think about it like I have but just because they’re single. Valentine’s Day is one of those holidays that seems to say, “this is not for you” if you aren’t in a relationship.  But even that doesn’t seem to be entirely true anymore, and that leads me to my fourth and perhaps most perplexing question:  why does every cable station seem to think that Valentine’s Day is a great occasion for a re-run marathon?  I mean, are single people really that lonely?

Of course, it’s always possible that the marathons are geared toward couples, but if everything goes the way it should on Valentine’s Day, I’m not sure when these people would have time to work in three or four hours of TV viewing.  I thought the whole point of bribing someone into having sex with you was supposed to be so you would have something to do that night.  And besides, some of the marathons are a little off-color for a romantic evening.  I mean, if you’re out on a date and your partner says, “Let’s hurry up and eat so that we can go back to my house and watch eight straight hours of Criminal Minds,” you’re probably going to want to politely excuse yourself and then run to the nearest police station.

So, I think it’s safe to say that most of the Valentine’s Day TV marathons are meant for single people.  But are they really the people TV programmers seem to think they are? Are they really such desperate, lonely souls that they have nothing better to do on Valentine’s Day than sit around on the couch watching hour after hour of re-runs, swilling cheap scotch, and crying?  Are they people who really need a sitcom marathon to remind them that a boring nebbish like Bob Newhart could get a babe like Suzanne Pleshette and that even Estelle Getty wasn’t sitting home alone on Valentine’s Day? Well, yes, if TV programming is any indication, that’s exactly who these people are.

The funny thing is that most of the people I know in real life are absolutely nothing like their TV advertising counterparts.  I mean, most of the men I know aren’t particularly forgetful or noticeably stupid.  Most of the women I know think sex is a fine thing and good exercise to boot.  And most of the single people I know don’t sit around on the couch drinking cheap scotch.  They go to bars and drink cheap scotch. 

But then again, advertisers pay millions of dollars to put all that marketing out there.  Jewelers make up special pieces just for Valentine’s Day.  And someone actually gets paid to program all those re-run marathons.  So, it sort of stands to reason that there must be at least some men who really are that forgetful and stupid, some women who really do need to bribed into giving it up, and some single people who are single-handedly keeping the distilleries in business.  I don’t happen to know any of these people, but they must be out there.  And maybe that’s the real source of my confusion.  It’s just that age-old question:  who the hell are these people?

I suppose that in end, what irks me most about Valentine’s Day is just that I seem to wind up asking these same four questions every year, and it kind of reminds me of the four questions that are asked at Passover, in which case I should probably just invite all my friends over on Valentine’s Day and hold a seder.  I mean, when you come right down to it, Valentine’s Day is a very confusing holiday, and the only thing that keeps me from throwing up my hands and just giving up on it all together is that this year, buried in all the murky confusion and conflicting imagery, I’ve discovered one nugget of universal truth and the one thing about Valentine’s Day that we all understand from the time we’re children to the time we’re old and gray:  there’s candy.  Forgetful, thoughtful, stupid, smart, hesitant, horny, taken, single, drunk, sober—it doesn’t make any difference at all.  Amid the train wreck of confusion that truly is Valentine’s Day, there’s always going to be candy.  And that may well be as much clarity as I’m ever going to get on the subject.

Ultimately, I don’t think anybody really understands what they’re supposed to do on Valentine’s Day, and I have to admit that I find something sort of comforting about knowing that at some level, we’re all just winging it.  So, on this Valentine’s Day, do whatever you feel you must.  Fall in love, give gifts, make love, get drunk, watch sitcoms, whatever.  But don’t forget to take some time to pay homage to what is the true essence and absolute core of this holiday’s meaning.  In other words, don’t forget to have some sweets.  After all, when it comes to Valentine’s Day, love is fleeting as far as I can tell, but candy is forever.

Philosophy for a hungry planet.

Enjoy.



© R. Rissler, 2012.  All rights reserved.