As soon as I changed my personal message on MSN to "I hate Valentine's Day", lot of people started asking me why I hate it? Well, I've decided to put the answer on my blog as well.

 

I believe that the whole idea or concept of Valentine's Day is really stupid and childish. Why do we need to specify one day as a day for lovers? Love is forever, not for one day? Why we need to celebrate love on that day? When you love someone forever you are celebrating it everyday. Some people say that this day is for remembering some lovely stories. Who cares about remembering those "lovely" stories of other people? Two people fell in love, so what? I should have my own story.

 

Some say that it is to confess your love to the person on whom you have a crush. How stupid is that? You'll definetly get rejected if you do that because girls might think that you are just being flirty on that day. I would never do that. 

 

I think this event was propogated by some chocolate makers who just wanted to have a huge sale of chocolates on that day. Nicely wrapped inside a heart-shaped box, so tempting that no one can resist to buy them for their lovers. The chocolate makers must be going really crazy "Profit baby, profit!"

 

Few months ago, I read an advertisement about a soap. That soap manufacturer advertised by propogating a "Hand Washing Day", I never heard of such a day before. Where did this day come from? How many "Days" are you going to have? As if you never wash your hands and this day is specially for washing your hands. I bet there must be a "Face Washing Day", "Bath Day" (for those who never took a bath in 365 days) and "Bathroom Washing Day" too. How ironic? What is this world turning into?

 

Someone asked me, ok, if you hate Valentine's Day, then you must also be hating Mother's Day, Father's Day and Children's Day. I told her that in western cultures it is quite common for young people to leave their parents behind and live entierly on their own, and their societies support this infrastructure. For them these days maybe important to remember their parents. However, in most of the Eastern societies, children are very loyal to their parents and taking care of them when they are old is considered an obligation.

 

For lovers, wedding anniversary is important because it is their special day, it is the day when they got married. Similarly your Birthday is important because it is the day when you were born, so it is your special day. But what's the point of Valentine's Day? Why it has become more important than the Wedding Anniversary?

  

One thing that has alarmed me is that in China, people always turn mad when it comes to Valentine's Day. Some years ago, the concept of Valentine's Day never existed in that country. But now, young Chinese people don't take so much interest in their own festivals as much as they do in Valentine's Day and other western festivals like Christmas. They have all become western wannabes. I'm afraid someday the Chinese culture, traditions and customs will be lost forever, this will make China a very boring place to live. And if there will be any culture left, it will be a mixed and confusing culture. China has already lost many of their customs.

 

China has a 5,000 years of continous civilization and an amazing culture. Preserving this culture is highly important. Just imagine, if the whole world has same culture, traditions and customs, then the whole world will turn out to be a very boring place. Learning about different cultures and festivals is very good, but celebrating festivals of alien cultures in your own country may sometimes turn out to be very disastrous for the local cultures. But I'm glad that traditional societies still exist in Japan and Korea atleast, and they haven't lost most of their customs.

 

Lee Kong

李空