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More on V-day: Lots of clichés

BY JULIA ALLISON | SPECIAL TO amNEWYORK

January 30, 2006

Valentine's Day is so fraught with clichés that there's nothing remotely original left to say about it. You can't say you love it. Been done, obviously. You can't say you hate it. Definitely been done, with vitriol by people even more bitter than you.

And you certainly can't use the word Hallmark and over-commercialized in the same sentence. You might as well stamp "trite" on your forehead.

To stem the tide of irate V-Day platitudes, I suggest the following guidelines (with love, of course):

1) Put things in perspective. April 15th (uh, tax day) is a pain-in-the-ass, just sucks, no-good-part-about-it hassle. Valentine's Day, on the other hand, is an opportunity. People are so eager to dismiss any holiday that requires effort as an obnoxious inconvenience that they forget life would be pretty damn boring otherwise. Taking time out to celebrate, to appreciate the people you love, to demand presents and copious praise from your significant other (or, barring that, your mother) this is the good part of life!

2) Stop. Complaining. Now. It's not V-Day's fault that your personal life leaves something to be desired. So you don't have a date, you don't have a boyfriend, you have a boyfriend but he's ugly, you have a girlfriend but she wants a ring, you haven't had sex in a year. These are not calamities! (Except maybe the last one.) Frankly, every single one of those is your own damn fault. Yes, Valentine's Day has a tendency to highlight romantic problems in your life but instead of whining about them, change them!

3) Try out a little Valentine's Day amnesia. Even if you've had a decade of uninterrupted V-Day duds, get over your past disappointments. After all, "one of the keys to happiness is a bad memory," says an optimistic friend of mine. There's nothing wrong in forgetting the past, especially if it involved playing "What the World Needs Now (Is Love)" over and over as you penned unrequited declarations of love in your journal.

Okay, so you've done all that. But you're still single. And you still hate Valentine's Day (even after my lecture on clichés). I have only one idea left for you: Valoween. It's a combination of the two greatest holidays of the year: the party-atmosphere and costumes of Halloween with the red/pink color-scheme and actual sex of Valentine's Day. Throw in some remixed love songs and sangria and it will be the newest, most popular holiday in America clearly benefiting the unattached, for once.

After all, men may not like buying flowers for their girlfriend, but they sure as hell wouldn't mind buying a drink for a girl in vintage lingerie on Valoween.

Which is what I'm counting on.