My Valentine's Disappointment

By Ben Molyneux

I waited all Valentine’s Day in a state of anticipation. I knew exactly what I wanted, and I could feel the goosebumps rising on my skin every time I thought about it. Having waited all year for this one opportunity, I could barely contain my excitement to finally get what I was waiting for. And yet, as the day ticked slowly closer to ending, it was clear that I was once again going to be disappointed on the celebration of St Valentine.

You see, all I wanted to see was one Christian article questioning Valentine’s Day. I’ve seen Christians argue and question all sort of cultural happenings: hand-wringing over tattoos, aggressive denouncements of watching Game of Thrones and more words written about Halloween than there are drops in the ocean. I guarantee you someone is currently writing a tortured article about what Shrove Tuesday being known as Pancake Day says about our God-less culture. But I haven’t seen any hot trending articles about Valentine’s Day.

Pictured: A tool of Satan. A delicious, beautiful tool.

We know that, as Christians, we’re meant to be counter-cultural, but I think we’ve lost our way. So many of our attempts are surface-level, confronting the superficial issues without ever really challenging much of the basis of our culture. We feel like we’ve done our part but, in reality, we’re just as much a part of the culture as everyone else.

Take everyone’s favourite hot-button topic, gay marriage. So often opposition to gay marriage is presented as this counter-cultural act of rebellion against the zeitgeist, but the reality is that it is nothing of the sort. There's the global perspective: Russia is one of many countries currently cracking down on homosexuality. It wasn’t very long ago that Uganda was trying to introduce the death penalty for being gay. Or the historical perspective: there are an estimated 15000 men alive today that were chemically castrated by the UK government, simply for being gay. Or there's even the present day in this country: rates of suicide and self-harm are much higher in LGBT community, and it seems likely this is linked to the higher rate of bullying they face.

Now, none of this says anything about the legitimacy or otherwise of gay marriage. The point is, there’s nothing counter-cultural about opposing gay marriage when the culture we are in is one that is still oppressive, albeit less so, towards the LGBT community. Oppose gay marriage all you want, but don’t pretend it’s counter-cultural.

“But Ben,” I hear you cry, “what was this got to do with Valentine’s Day?” Good question. Valentine’s Day is an accepted part of our culture, and largely goes unchallenged by the Church. But if we want to be genuinely counter-cultural, Valentine’s is an excellent place to start. On the surface it’s a very innocent celebration of love, but dig just a little deeper and it’s clear that its roots are less savoury.

After all, Valentine’s Day’s main point is this: buy things to demonstrate love. I can’t imagine a more capitalistic holiday, and it’s thoroughly un-Christian. Love is about self-sacrifice, about giving of yourself to the other. Splashing cash around is, in reality, a cheap way to love. Valentine’s day, as it’s represented in our culture, takes love and makes it about money.

It’s also often deeply sexist. I have yet to see a single Valentine’s advert that isn’t sexist on some level. They often reinforce sexist myths that are prevalent in our culture: women use sex to get love, men use love to get sex; all women like flowers, chocolate, princesses and the colour pink; men only show their affection under duress. It’s nonsense, but it’s deeply ingrained into our cultural horizons. And Valentine’s Day serves to deepen their grip on our cultural consciousness further.

I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong with celebrating Valentine’s Day. But if we’re as desperate as we claim we are to be counter-cultural Christians, critiquing Valentine’s and its roots are a good way to start. Let’s stop getting caught up in the superficial when dangerous un-Christian ideas are endemic in our culture. We need to stop salving our desire to be subversive by protesting cheap, hot-button issues without dealing with the big issues in our culture. Being counter-cultural is our calling; in a capitalistic, misogynistic culture, maybe the Christian thing to do is to criticise Valentine’s Day. Who knows: what starts on Valentine’s may end up lasting for life.

Shane Claiborne's Valentine's post on Facebook is worth a look for the real meaning of Valentine's. Apparently in some European countries, it's common to spend time with friends and family, often eating dinner, on Valentine's as a display of love for each other, which is pretty cool and worth looking into it as well.