Lamenting the creep of Valentine's day...

As someone who seems to be chronically single, despite my best (ok, my mediocre) efforts, I don't much like Valentine's Day. It serves as a reminder to me that I'm single and have not yet found a way to change that.

But if it was just one day a year, I probably wouldn't mind so much. I mean, if I was in a relationship, I'd probably want a day to celebrate it. I can't really begrudge those who have found someone from celebrating it, even if it reminds me that I haven't.

But what annoys me is that it doesn't seem to be Valentine's Day anymore - it's more like Valentine's 6 weeks. Back at the end of December, while I was still picking through clearanced Christmas candy, Target was rolling out pink chocolates and teddy bears holding hearts. And every time I open my personal email account, I seem to get at least one email from somewhere that I've purchased something, telling me the great V-day gifts they sell for the loved one I don't have. I even got one from Home Depot, a store nobody thinks of when they think of Valentine's Day.

I've written about my annoyance with Christmas Creep before - the fact that Christmas merchandise starts showing up in September, making Christmas almost anti-climactic after 4 months of fake snow and red and green everything. V-day is now the same way, except unlike Christmas I wasn't even looking forward to it in the first place.

I assume there are customers who actually shop that early - businesses don't usually put merchandise out if nobody is buying them. Part of it, though, is probably just that they have space to take up. Most modern stores leave a certain amount of room for "seasonal" merchandise, which is easy to fill up around Christmas and during the summer when you have giant piles of patio furniture, or with school supplies in August. In January, there isn't much else to put out, so stores put out V-day crap, figuring that some sales are better than having empty space.

And thus the lonely get six weeks of being reminded of their loneliness.