A Blog Entry About Valentine's Day for Husbands.

It's been said that Valentine's day is a Hallmark Holiday that deserves no observation; unfortunately for the cynical and lazy men out there who really want to believe that, it simply isn't true.

Valentine's Day is old. Really old. It's way older than Thanksgiving and is one of the oldest holidays we observe. No, it was not invented by Hallmark or annoying women, as a matter of fact, it was invented before society allowed women to invent things.  (These are just excuses men use who don't want to buy a present.)

If you don't like buying things for your wife, man up and say it to her face. Just tell her, "Honey, I don't want to buy you something even though I know it will make you happy." This will probably never happen because the men who complain about Valentine's Day are too cowardly to say things like this, so they whine about Valentine's Day being "made up" instead.

The earliest Valentine's Day celebrations predate the titular saint and exist in pagan pantheistic fertility celebrations. (Those pagans were always celebrating fertility; that's how we know that they really knew how to live.) As infoplease.com puts it:

The holiday's roots are in the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, a fertility celebration commemorated annually on February 15. Pope Gelasius I recast this pagan festival as a Christian feast day circa 496, declaring February 14 to be St. Valentine's Day.

and the History Channel gives us this scoop:

The boys then sliced the goat's hide into strips, dipped them in the sacrificial blood and took to the streets, gently slapping both women and fields of crops with the goathide strips. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed being touched with the hides because it was believed the strips would make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would then each choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage...

...In Great Britain, Valentine's Day began to be popularly celebrated around the seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth century, it was common for friends and lovers in all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes. By the end of the century, printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology.

So there. It's an old holiday, and your wife probably already knows this since girls always know this stuff. When you tell her that Valentine's Day is "made up" or an invention of Hallmark, she knows better. Not only are you being a non-romantic boorish male who refuses to sweep her off of her feet, but you are also showing yourself to be uneducated. Quite the successful relationship you have embarked upon. I bet when your wife was a little girl she dreamed of marrying a cheap coward who didn't care about her feelings.

Flowers are not expensive. Neither are chocolates. Or a date. Or a picnic or a simple stroll in a park (see, this isn't that difficult). And, what do you get out of it? Hopefully, you already know this, but being romantic with your wife on the right day of the year has many benefits. (And, for once, we don't have to read their minds - this one is on the calendar.)

So, you can either do something special for your wife or, alternatively, be a boring dumb guy. Good luck making your decision.