Holidays

This Valentine's day I got a sweet half made half bought card from a friend of mine. It said:

Who's Awesome
ashley?
You Are

and then on the inside there was this picture and the words:

To the most beautiful, caring, courageous, wonderful woman I know. Happy Valentines day.

He also found me some of my favorite chocolate. MARS bars!! Yum.
But my second gift I received on Sunday, was delivered to me while I slept. Someone busted out my window in my living room. Normally this would be an easy fix, but with 3 inches of snow and a sick landlord, It's covered in plastic and sleeping under every blanket I own. Some joyful day.
I remember Valentines Days when in grade school we'd spend the better part of a week creating shoebox mailboxes for our individual desks. Each person in the class would decorate their box in whatever festive motif they desired as long as there was a slit on the top to place valentines through. We'd each give a valentine to everyone else in the class, or at least everyone who wasn't a glue-sniffing-booger-eater with cooties.That style of expected giving, threw me off Valentines Day for a while. Until my senior year of highschool.
My First time I bought someone flowers.
I decided to use the extra money I had saved up from January and buy my friends and others Roses for Valentines Day. I gave up my lunch hour to go into town and peruse the flower shops for my roses. I bought 3 long-long stem deep red roses, (one for each of my "loves"). I bought a dozen red roses, a dozen yellow roses, a dozen pink roses and two dozen white roses. These I passed out to my friends who I love, people I like and some times those who just looked like they needed the comfort of a beautiful flower from someone who cared. I got a HUGE HIGH from this giving. Not only did I get to break a few traditions about guys only giving girls flowers, but I'd like to think that I may have changed a few people's mind about Valentines Day.

I believe that while showing love through spending money can lead the motivation behind giving gifts. (the bigger/ more expensive the gift the more Love) I think that Valentines Day is a day where people can show, unashamedly kindness to those around them. It's a day when it's okay for mean and women alike to say... I love you.
And I've often taken to buying flowers for people. Sometimes on whim (I'll drive past a florist) maybe it's because they need to be cheered up from something (death, a bad breakup). I even buy them for myself. To brighten up my home, or because it's such a shame that on a shelf in a shop, they will only be thrown out, and not sniffed, and watered and treasured for being a wonderful creation of beauty.

I believe that many things, TRADITIONS, Holidays, Words, Actions...have lost their value and meaning. Here's a little parody of what Valentines Day could mean. After all, it was so long ago...Who really knows. And more to the point. If something has meaning for you (giving a gift) why worry about the meaning it could have had 200 years ago, when you and she/he knows what it means for the two of you.