Valentine’s Day – to some it is the day of amore.

To others – the one day a year you have the opportunity to really show that special someone how much you love and respect them.

Still for others- a day to show your friends and family you need them and you are glad they are part of your life.

But, answer me this, should you really need a day to do all this? Shouldn’t these things come natural to a person? Should society really have proclaimed that Feb. 14 is the day to do all these things? Shouldn’t they happen all year round?

Valentine’s Day originated in 498 AD by Pope Gelasius. He started this lottery system of pairing young couples together. The couples were supposed to go off, be happy and fall in love. I am sorry but this does not sound like the start of a love holiday. It sounds like some pope decided to play God and force young people to get married when he deemed it appropriate. Therefore, even though it may be the thing that started the holiday we now call Valentine’s Day, it sounds more like an interesting way to validate the concept of arranged marriages in society.

As time goes on and the world gets a little older, the holiday actually picks up meaning. Charles Duke of Orleans wrote the first official Valentine’s Day card in 1415. He wrote letters to his wife when he was imprisoned in The Tower of London. The letters Charles wrote were a sign that even though he was away from her, he was still in love with her and he was still thinking about her.

Charles had the right idea, my friends. He loved his wife so much he did not need some assigned day to show her how much he needed and loved her. He did not just write her these love letter because it was Feb. 14. He wrote them because he cared. That is what matters here; people the actual emotions of love and the actions that follow.

Now as we move to the 21st century, what has become of this romantic holiday? Just like most things, we people of the 21st century found some way to screw up the message that Charles left us. We turned love letters to a wife from a loving husband into a get-rich-quick scheme for the the flower and card stores of the world.

Valentine’s Day is nothing more than a commercialized day where men feel they need to spend a large amount of money on a female so she realizes how much he really loves and cares for her.

It is a time where stores like Hallmark and 1-800-Flowers really pick up the slack if they have an off year. It is the time of the year that delivery services yearn and pine for.

Then on another level, how about all those people who do not have someone to share this day with? What happens to all those single people of the world? Oh, who cares about them right? The businesses forgot to add them into their little money making plan.

Just because these people do not have significant others does not mean they deserve to sit alone and wonder why no one wanted to share this day with them. They don’t deserve to think they are unwanted and undesired.

These people need to realize that Valentine’s Day is just another day like any other day. They should realize there are people in the world who care about them and if they feel the need to fit into society and celebrate, they can share it with them. These people need to realize they don’t need a boyfriend or a girlfriend to be someone. They are someone on theirown.

Therefore, I am not some cynical female who has a cold heart and hates romance. I love romance and I like when I am romanced or when I romance someone. I just dislike the fact that society felt the need to tell me the right time and the right day to do the romancing.

In my eyes, we should be mature enough and humane enough to let every day be Valentine’s Day. We should be able to walk up to the people we love and tell them we love them whenever we want. We shouldn’t tell people we love them just because some ancient pope decided that today was the day.

The population of this world should realize we are people not cattle. We need to think on our own, act on our own, and love on our own.

So this is my advice to all of you, instead of rushing around the week before Feb. 14 trying to find something your Valentine would like and trying to make this person feel special on this one holiday. Try making this person feel special throughout the year. Try telling this person you love and care for them every day.

In the long run, this person will love and respect you more if you can say these things when you want to and not when you are forced to.

Because, like the saying goes, “Love is what makes the world go round,” and with the way things are going, I fear if Valentine’s Day is somehow taken off the calendar, the world would just stop spinning.