Happy Saturday!

I’m not entirely sure what it is about public holidays that I so detest. I realise that part of my dislike of Valentines day (or, as the Catholic Church now tells us, St. Raphael’s Day) is merely the fact that I am not part of the hoards of lovey-dovey couples for whom Valentines day is a time to go out to a restaurant/cinema/club and say just how much they wuv each other. Were this the only public holiday that irritated me, I think that this would probably suffice, but that’s not the case.

All holidays basically share one thing in common, people look to them to be a time when they feel happy about something, whether that be relationships, family, chocolate or whatever that holiday happens to represent, and it can generally be counted on that most of the the time surrounding said holiday, or quite often, during the holiday itself, one finds that they are the least happy about said celebration. Holidays create a form of expectation of greatness, Valentines day can often bring expectations of grand romantic gestures, with these exprectations reciprocated bya great range of expressions of love, from simple flowers and chocolates, to a strange and insatiable need to go to the heart shaped island their partner just discovered on Google maps (would that I were joking). People seem to expect a great deal from one special day, and I’m sure that they really enjoy it if everything goes to plan, however, were but one thing to go wrong, all hell may break loose. You have ruined Valentines day and obviously don’t love him/her as much as they love you. 

This, as I said before is not a trait true only for Valentines day. All large holidays suffer from a period of expectation that can usually never be fulfilled in one simple day. Christmas is probably the best example of a holiday overblown to galactic proportions. Everyone has a tale of a ruined Christmas, or how terrible Christmasses always are, how uncle Ted always gets drunk, and how Grandpa always tells rather embarassing and innapproptiate stories to the small children, and yet we continue to hype up this strange festival of presents and sparkly things as if it were a period that we actually enjoy every year. Why would you continue to meet up with these people and exchange gifts they don’t really want or need when you don’t really want to?

The problem again is the fact that, in our media driven culture, we are driven to expect things from these festivals. The television becomes filled with over-joyous people celebrating whatever season in special “holiday” episodes, the newspapers write special articles telling us how to have perfect festivities, and condemn those who have publicly spoken out against them as grumpy kill-joys. All of this fervour merely adds to our expectations of the holiday, creating a bigger let-down when the day actually arrives. 

It’s not that I don’t believe that the things that these holidays represent aren’t important or nice, it’s just that I feel that consigning them to a single day has robbed each thing of its specialness. Why should you be resigned to showing affection for your partner on Valentines day, surely any other day of the year is equally important for informing them of your feelings, why must we gather together at Christmas, when so many people do not believe or care about the reasons, and why must we eat chocolate at Easter, when new life springs around us for most of the year, were we not too closed-minded to see it. People should celebrate these things, but the requirements of each individual day has created expectations far beyond those that anyone could fulfil, and has robbed the sanctity of those emotions. I really wish that people could see that these days aren’t important, and show their feelings of joy whenever they appear, rather than funnelling them all into the media-fueled frenzy of these arbitrary days.

Until I actually get to university (although it’s only a month away), this page is probably going to be rather sparse, as I currently live an uninteresting life of sleeping and more sleeping. i set up this blog in the vague hope that this doesn’t continue at university, although I have a sneaking suspicion that it just might. If such a thing does happen, I may have to resort to making up interesting things to have happened, but I’ll endevour to create actual interest. Meanwhile, whilst I wait impatiently for university to begin, everyone enjoy your summers (and the beginnings of school terms. HAH!)