Regardless of its religious and/or cultural relevance, the “holiday” known far and wide as Valentine’s Day should go the way of the Dodo and become a thing of the past.

It’s the day that the majority of men and, in fact, some women, have come to dread every year. The day when we are expected, as a people, to celebrate love. Now, we don’t do this by going up to our neighbors and fellow men and women and telling them that we love them for who they are. No, we don’t do anything as selfless as that. That would be an amazing act of human compassion and beauty and, let’s face it, we don’t really have that these days.

The way we are expected to celebrate our “love” is with copious amounts of candy – preferably chocolate – that tends to follow an expensive dinner under candle light at a nice restaurant with wine and hors d’oeuvres. So the love we have for our significant other is often measured by the amount of money that was spent on this particular “holiday.” While there is a religious affiliation with Valentine’s Day – the feast of Saint Valentine, in fact – it is safe to assume that the current way the majority of the world celebrates Saint Valentine was not sanctioned by the Vatican.

Rather than picking one day out of the year to spoil our loved one(s) rotten, wouldn’t it make more sense to simply tell them, on a daily basis, how much you love them? Or does it not make sense to spread that love out over all 365 days of the year, rather than condensing it into one ludicrous, and expensive day in February?

Plus, there’s the slight issue of all the men and women who are single on Valentine’s Day. While couples are staring blissfully at each other over candle light, holding hands and listening to sweet symphonic melodies, all the single men and women are doing one of two things: they’re sitting at home, eating ice cream and listening to The Smiths or The Cure, or they’re out at a local bar drowning their “I’m single on Valentine’s Day” blues with copious amounts of top shelf alcohol. It is a sad truth of this existence that, yes, there are men and women who are single on Valentine’s Day. Oh, the travesty of this is insurmountable. Well, not really, but you get the idea.

So, rather than encouraging the further celebration of a commercialized holiday that all but requires couples to spend their hard earned money on cards, flowers, dinners, hotel rooms, lingerie, hair cuts, perfume and all the other standard fare for this time of year, why don’t we just get rid of it and replace it with something better? Or, perish the thought, why don’t we just get rid of it and make Feb. 14 an altogether regular day again? I know, shocking thought, yes?