OldTroubador's blog post - It's just another day to me.

Another Valentine's Day is approaching. Yay. I won't be celebrating it this year. I haven't celebrated it for 17 years. One reason is personal, a couple of other reasons are because of what the day has become.
Personally, an event happened on Valentine's Day that foretold of a another problem a few years later. It was a minor event, as it turned out, but at the time was fairly tragic. So the day holds bad feelings to me.
More importantly though, is what has happened over the years to this minor holiday. The rampant commercialism of this, and any other, holiday has pretty well ruined the “holiday spirit”. Billboards, flyers, advertisements, newspaper inserts all exhort us to buy the biggest, the shiniest, the best we cannot afford to prove our love to someone else. Even the heart shaped boxes of candy now come in 5- or 10-lb packages. People confide in their friends that the gift they received was not what they wanted, was not as exorbitant or showy enough for them; I have been told these things after giving a gift too. The price of roses quadruples, or more, in the week leading up to 14 February, only to return overnight to normal levels. It has turned into another day for retailers to extort money from the masses. And, although Hallmark Cards had nothing at all to do with the implementation of this day, it is the ultimate manifestation of a string of “Hallmark Holidays” that span the year. Which brings me to point number two.
There are many Days that are supposed to be used to celebrate family, friends, and co-workers. Bosses's Day, Secretaries' Day, Mother-in-Law Day, Grandparents' Day, the list goes on and on. These are supposed the days we honor these folks and show them some appreciation. If you need a day on the calendar outlined in red to remind you to show a little appreciation for these people, along with mothers, fathers, and lovers, then you have failed as a human being. You might not be able to tell everyone every day how you feel about them, but you should still make the effort throughout the year. A simple “thank you” or “You're doing a helluva job, thanks” or “I love you” costs nothing and yet reaps large rewards.
When I ran an office and warehouse, my co-workers knew how I felt – because I told them. One year, the corporation decided to implement a series of training that dealt with inter-personal interactions. After one class, the branch manager came to me and told me that he never realized how important and easy it was to say “Thank you for a job well done.” I told him it was something I learned in the sandbox in kindergarten and had been thanking my crew for years. I guess I missed the class that taught us how do deal with the ignorant. And not a week goes by that I don't tell my manager now that I appreciate all the hard work she puts in to keep me running.
A line from the book Belles on Their Toes, the sequel to Cheaper by the Dozen, rings in my head. On Mothers' Day, the mother of the family told all her children not to bother buying her anything. She felt the day was set up to give children a way to atone for 364 days of neglect and forgetfulness. Or, to put it another way, an excuse to be neglectful for 364 days and then atone for it on one special day. To me, that is what Valentine's Day, and a host of others, has become - a minor league day of atonement for a year of neglect.
My family and friends and especially my daughter all know how I feel about them because I tell them. Not out of a sense of obligation, but because I want them to know. We never know what the morrow will bring, it is not our place to know if we will see another Valentine's Day, or Mothers' Day. And if something were to happen to a friend or family member and I hadn't told them lately how I feel about them, I would have to carry that burden the rest of my life.
In conclusion, I say to all my friends Happy Thursday the 12th, Happy Friday the 13th. I love you all and appreciate everything you do for me.