Everybody's a Valentine

And We Have Treats for All Your Sweets

People are always asking little kids what they imagine God looks like, and since most small children haven’t begun to question whether God is actually a thing or if there’s only one, it’s always an adorable—if sometimes telling—exercise. What I want to know is how everyone imagines the one who goes by Saint Valentine. Not just kids. Grown-ups, too. Who do you see? Is it a roly-poly, round-cheeked, childlike cherub carrying a crossbow loaded with a heart-tipped arrow? Is it a religious icon—maybe a Byzantine priestly type with a halo? Me, I see this guy (the one in the middle), Valentin Kretz of the Parisian Family Kretz on that Netflix reality show about luxury real estate because clearly TV has rotted my brain and because I sometimes fantasize about being adopted into their clan (maybe I’d be a madcap cousin—I’m not a madcap person but I think it would be fun to try it out).

Otherwise, I see the guy who played Valentine, my love interest, in a camp production of the musical Babe in Arms. He was entirely not cute. Not to me. On his head, there sprouted a cross between a white man’s version of a Jheri curl (if such a thing could exist¹) and a mullet, and it was of a ginger hue. On his face, multiple pustules and pocky splotches. He may have turned out to be a real looker; that was probably an awkward period for him, but the point is, this guy was not It. He was also not the nerdy goofball stage manager I secretly nursed a crush on, who, of course, had a crush on my bunkmate with the shampoo commercial-good hair, who played my rival for Val’s affection. What an unrequited love quadrangle it was!

My point—I have one!—is that I never really thought of the namesake of our annual Day of Bedazzled Doilies as a person, or a person with romantical potential. Similarly, I didn’t grow up thinking that of Valentine’s Day either, and I’m forever grateful to my parents (and my grade school) for that. The first thing I remember learning about this holiday was what my father told me. “A trick of the Hallmark card company,” he called it. The second thing was presents. Every year, Mom and Dad gave me and my younger brother signed cards with cute rhymes about our greatness and why they adored us, hearts and cartoon animals. These were purchased at a shop in the neighborhood with a selection of cards (most of them stamped with the Hallmark logo, of course). Along with our cards came a gift—a something special we hadn’t asked for but they thought would delight us.

The third thing: pink peppermint meringues with chocolate chips and tiny notes in envelopes. This was part of the annual routine at the all-girls’ school I went to starting from kindergarten. The rule was that if you were going to bring Valentines, you had to bring them for everyone, so no one would feel excluded no matter how many friends they did or didn’t have. These tokens could be the generic decorated cards you could buy in packs that you labeled with each classmate’s name and signed, or they could be sweets, or both. We were Galentining before Hallmark et. al. co-opted that, too. My mom always made her meringues—they were chocolate chip meringues, and she added peppermint and red food coloring (we didn’t know it was a bad thing then), maybe some toasted almonds. These were such a hit that I continued to bring them in to school on February 14 through middle school and possibly into high school. I also went through a phase where I made customized cards for everyone, using stickers and rubber stamps.

Fourth: my parents did something nice for each other but didn’t make a big deal about it. Dad would give mom a gift, and Mom would cook a special dinner—something he loves that she would normally refuse to make. She was not sitting around demanding my father perform some grand flourish and judging him based on his offering. To this day, I’ve never understood why women get themselves all worked up about this “holiday,” as though it’s a competition to see whose boyfriend or husband did the most and proved he loved his woman more than any other man loved his.² It’s shades of dowry and all quite preposterous, not to mention deeply unromantic: If you have to force someone to display their affection, is it even real? Wouldn’t you rather an unprompted and unscripted act of love?

The net result of all the above was an association of Valentine’s Day with doing nice things for the people in my life (that I like)—nothing major or anything: sometimes, just wishing them a “Happy Hearts’ Day” or preferably, which I was known to do when I spent my days in An Office, handing out chocolate, or which I do now that I work from home, share homemade baked goods with my neighbors. I’m into this idea of making sure everyone gets a little love on that day, even as I hypocritically curse it for being exactly the thing my dad clocked it as so many years ago.

In that spirit, here are some trifles to bestow upon your people—and yourself, because you deserve a little love as much as the next guy or gal or Valentine, whoever they are or whatever they look like: