Yes, I’m single. No, I don’t hate romance; I watch “Bridgerton” and “Heated Rivalry.” How I feel about Feb. 14 has nothing to do with that and everything to do with society missing the point of the holiday in the first place.

Picture this: you’ve just gotten out of your anthropology class on Valentine’s Day 2024, and check your phone to find your best friend’s boyfriend has texted you asking which LEGO set he should get as a gift for her. He mentions how she’s been hinting at the LEGO Flower Bouquet set for months, yet he’s still asking you which one to get her … weird.

You tell him to get the flower bouquet set, but, unfortunately, all of them were snatched up in the time that it took you to respond, so he went ahead and purchased his second option: A MEGA BLOKS set of what he thought was your best friend’s favorite Pokémon (it wasn’t even close to her favorite).

You end the conversation because the boy is a lost cause. You receive a text from your best friend later on, saying that it was the worst Valentine’s Day of her life. Her boyfriend gave her the subpar MEGA BLOKS set, accompanied by cheap chocolates — incidentally, also, the only kind he should know makes her physically ill— and made a minuscule amount of pasta for the two of them that he couldn’t even be bothered to buy the ingredients for himself … shocker.

I bring this up not to bash my best friend’s now ex-boyfriend (I’ve had a lot of fun though), but as the final nail in my holiday-loathing coffin. Even though this wasn’t my ruined Valentine’s Day, I feel it echoes an ever-present problem with Feb. 14.

It seems to me that instead of being a day to genuinely celebrate love in all its forms, it has become a day for shallow commitment, where it doesn’t really matter what your partner wants, you just “celebrate” in the most convenient way so you can claim to have put in effort.

Now, I don’t think we should abolish Valentine’s Day as a whole — I’m not a heart-smashing cupid critic. I just think we need to take some time and reevaluate why we celebrate this holiday in the first place and what we can do to make it better.

With a recent YouGov survey revealing that 63% of Americans consider Valentine’s Day a regular day or their least favorite holiday, it seems I’m not alone on this. Many don’t really know the origins of the holiday since it has been flooded with capitalist hunger and a wave of red-40. The truth is, there is no exact origin point of Valentine’s Day: it stems from a myriad of legends and influences.

One legend depicts St. Valentine as a priest who was arrested and executed for marrying couples in secret after Emperor Claudius II prohibited marriage for young men, believing that they made better soldiers than husbands.

Another sets him up as a bishop who was also executed for practicing his faith and converting people. Some stories claim he was executed for helping Christians escape Roman prisons and that he sent the first “valentine” to a young girl he fell in love with during his pre-execution imprisonment.

You get the gist. Every story ends with St.Valentine’s death, so naturally, you’d think this holiday is set in February to coincide with his unfortunate demise, right? Not exactly.

There is also the belief that Valentine’s Day is only in February as an attempt to overshadow Lupercalia, a pagan fertility celebration celebrated on Feb. 15. The festival was banned at the end of the 5th century, just as Feb. 14 was proclaimed as St. Valentine’s Day.

Over the years, Valentine’s Day began to be marketed as a day for romance, even though there’s really no historical reason for it. The flower bouquets and tacky cards came from nothing except deduction of what the day should be about, rather than what it actually represents.

So why are we catering to romantic love on Feb. 14 when there’s no reason to? It should be a day for love in general, whether it’s for your romantic partner, your friends or your family. We’ve warped the meaning of the holiday before; we can certainly do it again, so everyone is included.

You don’t need a holiday to show someone you love them, but what if you just really want to celebrate your romantic partner and just them alone? There’s actually a day, specific to only you and them, on which you could celebrate your love for one another, without competing with the rest of the world. It’s called your anniversary.

Wouldn’t you rather focus on something tailored to your partner for your personal special day? In prioritizing your anniversary, you’re saving you and your partner from the V-Day nonsense. One of my personal theories as to why Valentine’s Day is such a big deal is that people either don’t want to remember their anniversary or just don’t care to try.

Valentine’s Day offers an anniversary loophole in which you can get away with skimping on one holiday if you make a big deal out of another. Valentine’s Day is to anniversaries what Christmas is to December birthdays. If you go all out for Valentine’s Day and buy the emotionally-hollow boxes of chocolate and knock-off Jellycats that are immediately available on every store shelf, you then save yourself a bunch of time and effort, but you sacrifice sentimental value.

Speaking of gifts, it’s time to address the massive carbon footprint in the room. When you consider that packaging alone constitutes roughly 36% of all plastics produced, over 99% of plastics are made of fossil fuel chemicals and cut flowers are often flown internationally from regions with more ideal climates, Valentine’s Day is an environmental nightmare.

You know what’s really romantic? Sustainability. Choosing locally sourced flower arrangements or potted plants, sending a digital card or making your own, upcycling gifts and prioritizing memories over material possessions. Valentine’s Day would become not only more enjoyable for people but for the planet as well.

Please, let’s stop frothing at the gash for ridiculous prix fixe dinner dates and the seasonally high-priced jewelry this Feb. 14. It’s time to reclaim this day in the name of actual love rather than love crafted by corporate greed over the years.

Valentine’s Day is what we make it. Faltering under the pressure of expectations is giving up our power. Be mindful of how you’re celebrating and who you’re doing it for.