6 Pitfalls You Should Avoid on Valentine’s Day

Time to bury your inner Valentine’s Day Scrooge.

This Valentine’s Day, try surprising a loved one with a gift. Biba Kayewich

Valentine’s Day brings a broad range of responses. Stalwarts embrace and celebrate the Day of Hearts, while cynics consider it a gimmick for selling greeting cards, flowers, and chocolates. Some use Valentine’s Day to pursue a new romance, while the recently brokenhearted may view its profusion of roses and candies as salt rubbed into fresh wounds.

Wherever we fall on this spectrum, Valentine’s Day can hardly be avoided. Grocery stores, pharmacies, card and flower shops, confectionaries, and restaurants all do booming business when Cupid comes to town. Consequently, we’re surrounded with an array of that chubby archer’s tokens of the season. Like it or not, we’re part of Valentine’s Day.

And so, whether you want to make the most of the occasion or slip past it with as little fuss and bother as possible, you may find some of the following “Don’ts” helpful.

1. Don’t Be Snarky

For the Day of Hearts detractors: When friends or family members are excited about cards that they’ve received or special meals that they’ve planned for their significant other, keep your Valentine’s Day Scrooge under wraps. Even if you find these verbal darts humorous, avoid quoting writers such as Oscar Wilde in his play “A Woman of No Importance” when he writes: “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.”

The planet has more than enough scoffers and naysayers, so why add your voice to that chorus? When you encounter a devotee of doves excited about plans for the Big Day, a discreet silence or a bland “well, that’s nice” is very much in order.

A suitable response is even more important for those skeptics who are involved with a Valentine’s aficionado, a spouse, or a companion for whom candy hearts and bouquets of roses mean the world. If you love that person, avoid all sarcasm like the plague and join wholeheartedly in the festivities. Who knows? You might even enjoy it.

2. Don’t Write an AI Poem or Love Letter

Recently, when I was talking about Valentine’s Day and poetry with one of my sons, he whipped out his phone, tapped a few keys, and four seconds later up popped a Valentine’s haiku, courtesy of that digital bard, Artificial Intelligence.

No, no, no, and no.

The poem was passable, but the idea of making that verse a Valentine’s Day gift is horrible, especially if you try to pass off that electronic bit of sorcery as your own composition. Either write your own poem or love letter, however rough the result, and present it to your beloved, or copy out some poem such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee?” or e.e. cummings’s “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond” and gift it with proper attribution to your spouse or special friend.

Remember: In matters of the heart, even disheveled sincerity beats slick deception, hands-down.

3. Don’t Stop With the Roses

This one is mostly for guys. You’ve paused at the grocery store on the drive home from work to pick up some roses, or maybe you’ve even gone the extra yard and ordered them ahead of time from a florist. You present the bouquet to your beloved, offer up a Happy Valentine’s Day, and then settle on the sofa as you so often do to watch the evening news while enjoying a beer.

Again, no, no, no. The roses are the hors d’oeuvres for the banquet of this special evening, not the main course. If the two of you have planned a date together or you have some surprise in store for your queen of hearts, then kudos to you. If not, bear in mind that it’s never too late to improvise. Suggest a walk around the block, a bottle of wine shared in the twilight, and a romantic movie.

The roses say “I love you.” The time spent together underlines and puts that declaration in bold print.

4. Don’t Forget the Chocolates

Some of us are not avid chocolate fans, but who would refuse a square of Ghirardelli’s?

On a first date, a chocolate bar tucked into a purse or pocket can be brought out, opened, and offered as a way to break an awkward silence. If a conversation with a disheartened spouse needs some sweetness, produce a bar of milk chocolate or, more significantly, perhaps, a few Hershey’s Kisses.

Medical and nutritional researchers have found that dark chocolate is good for the heart and circulatory system. Fans of Valentine’s Day have long known that chocolate is good for the heart and the amatory system. 

A confectionary addendum: Sweethearts and their knock-off brands—candies stamped with short, goofy inscriptions such as “Be Mine” and “Cutie Pie”—can also be produced and bring some laughter during a tense moment or a break in a conversation.

5. Don’t Ignore the Power of the Unexpected Gift

In the film “Finding Forrester,” writer William Forrester offers this advice to a young protégé who is attracted to a girl: “The key to a woman’s heart is an unexpected gift at an unexpected time.”

True, but that axiom applies to anyone, male or female, young or old. Recently, a friend, having heard me complain about missing my watch, which had broken beyond repair, surprised me with a replacement. The watch she’d bought—which was exactly what I wanted—wasn’t expensive, but that she had done this at all was a delightful shock.

This Valentine’s Day, try surprising someone—your beloved, your parents or grandparents, anyone you care about—with an unexpected gift. The excitement and joy that you receive in return will likely be memorable.

6. Don’t Shy Away From Romance

Search online for “Is romance dead?” and you’ll find a lively and ongoing debate over that question. Some of these articles make for high entertainment, no matter which position they defend.

One piece in particular struck a chord with me. In her article “Romance is not dead—we’re all just dead inside,” 22-year-old Carina Galvan contends that “Romance is not dead. People just stopped putting in the effort to take action and make their romance happen.” She reminds us that romance, that heady blend of mystery, adventure, and exhilaration, usually requires some active engagement on our part if it is to live and breathe.

In Galvan’s article, we find the good cheer, sweet naivete, and buoyancy traditionally associated with youth. Particularly germane to our purposes here is this observation: “Whether you found yourself spending Valentine’s Day alone, with your friends, or with a special somebody this year, remember that romance is not dead.” In short, we must not mistake the absence of romance in our own lives for the absence of romance everywhere.

Human beings are built for romance, from that first dizzying time we fall in love to those deep-seated, inexpressible emotions bred and nurtured from a long, loving relationship. However you feel about Valentine’s Day, ignore the naysayers of romance.

As Robin Williams’s character says in “Dead Poets Society” while trying to incite some passion in his students, “Poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”