Club A Saint Day! - By Matty Jacobson

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It’s about time people stop complaining about Valentine’s Day.

 It’s not really my fault, nor anyone else’s for that matter, that you don’t have a boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife/mistress/friend with benefits. Yet for some reason, those of you who are partner impaired seem to go on an annual anti-Valentine tirade against those of us fortunate to have someone who puts up with us.

 OK, that may have come off a little harsh. But it really is the root of a lot of depression issues this time of year. Single people are always envious of those who have someone special to share Feb. 14 with. I know this because I was there, too.

 Hindsight, as they say, is like a television show about true life mysteries that airs Friday nights on ABC (you’ll get that one later). So knowing what I know now, I’ll give all single folks a review. You’re rated one out of five human hearts to hold in your hand. That way you can at least say you’ve got someone’s heart, even if that heart isn’t anyone’s in particular.

 I remember the days when I would despise my friends who went on dates on Valentine’s Day. For some reason I had it imprinted on my brain like a newspaper comic on a glob of Silly Putty that my friends should have noticed how single I was and therefore gone out of their way to spend some extra time with me.

 “How selfish of them,” I would think.

 Luckily, before I found my soul mate, I figured out a way to make this heart-themed winter’s day a little more bearable.

I started celebrating Saint Valentine’s Day, as in the person and not the 24 hours we profess our undying love to some other creature. Feb. 14 was the day Saint Valentine was beaten with clubs and then beheaded for refusing to refute his belief in the Christian faith. This is according to a report on saints and angels on Catholic.org, so I have faith that’s at least the gist of what happened.

 Of course it makes perfect sense that the torture and beheading of a man should forever be celebrated by cutting out paper hearts and sending them to the person we want to make out with. But I decided to celebrate a different way. I decided that with every valentine I handed out to friends and family, I would include a little fact about a famous person who was beheaded.

It just made more sense to me to acknowledge Valentine’s Day as more of head-detached-from-body awareness day. Finally, I could use all those pictures I kept drawing of Marie Antoinette.

 Needless to say, I never followed through on my idea because I’m essentially a pretty lazy person. But I certainly hope you see my point: If you can’t stand this holiday, then why not turn it into a holiday you can stand?

 I’d like to hear everyone’s alternative celebratory styles for Valentine’s Day. Instead of griping about not being hitched, why not sing a song about getting clubbed? I’m rating every person who comes up with a new way to celebrate Valentine’s Day with one out of one perfect person to spend the rest of his or her life with. OK, I can’t really promise that, but the world and I would love to hear them anyway.

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