Saint Valentine's Day
From Encyclopedia Of Stupid
Saint Valentine's Day is stupid.
Saint Valentines Day, colloquially known as Valentine's Day, or V-Day or, occasionally, VD (February 14th) is yet another example of a holiday manufactured by corporations to create profit. For this reason, socialists protest the holiday each year in violent demonstrations, seeing as how violent demonstration is the only way to get a point across these days. The artificial nature of the holiday, however, is utterly trumped by its ubiquity - and women the world over have become accustomed to certain treatment on Valentine's Day. Your dumb ass will still grudgingly buy them candy and/or flowers or face serious consequences.
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History
Boring Church Shit
I guess it's a no-brainer that the holiday has its early roots in the church, after all it is, "Saint" Valentine's Day, but seriously, is there any custom we routinely engage in that wasn't put in place by the church to mollify pagans? The story goes that there were two ancient martyrs named Valentine and I guess they died or something and then the Pope declared that they were both saints and their hometowns had a big party and started spinning tall tales about their exploits, you know the routine. It's the same shit, every fucking holiday. Some dumbshit saint got killed in some dumbshit crusade and some dumbshit legend sprang up around him. Eventually you end up with a naked midget flying around in the air shooting arrows into people that make them fall in love. 
What's Love Got To Do With It?
Nothing. At least initially. It wasn't until the Renaissance that the holiday became closely associated with romance, because nobody could really be all that romantic until the Renaissance. Everyone was too busy dying of the Plague. Once people were able to devote more time to leisure, homosexuals were able to convince everybody that romance wasn't gay, and thus was Valentine's Day as we know it born.
Modern Observance
Exchanging of Valentine's Cards
Originally conceived as a cash cow by the Hallmark greeting card company, the practice of asking someone to "be your valentine" by exchanging "valentine's cards" is used mainly as a way to socialize children by subjecting them to public humiliation. The shame of being rejected on the one day that nobody is supposed to reject you prepares them for the inevitable life of despair and longing that they are certain to experience.
Candy and Flowers
You know, it doesn't really matter where this custom originated, although speculation is rampant that the greedy executives inside the hallowed halls of Big Chocolate conspired with the cunning charlatans of Big Flowers to lobby Congress to make laws that would require every adult male to purchase oil, er, chocolate and flowers for their significant others on February 14th. The laws didn't make it past the Supreme Court, but women caught wind of the effort and decided that it didn't matter whether there were laws in place, they liked chocolate and flowers, goddamnit. To the delight of the chocolate and flowers cartels, men today dutifully purchase chocolate and flowers under the watchful eye of Big Girlfriend.
Criticisms
A robust anti-valentine industry has sprung up to service the sizeable number of people who are against this holiday. These include greeting cards with slogans on them such as "HAPPY UNIMAGINATIVE, CONSUMERIST-ORIENTED AND ENTIRELY ARBITRARY, MANIPULATIVE AND SHALLOW INTERPRETATION OF ROMANCE DAY." Since the movement is made up entirely of single fatties, however, nobody really pays them much attention.
In the Islamic world, Valentine's Day protests are held on February 14th, as effigies of hearts are burned amid shouts of "DEATH TO THE GREAT SATAN." Love, you see, leads to touching. Touching leads to fondling. Fondling leads to getting naked. Getting naked leads to fucking. Fucking is a sin. 
