Initially, this tradition started as a kind of parody of the holiday. A few years ago, while we were still dating, we felt like we should go do something to celebrate. However, neither of us were actually very big fans of the holiday (for the usual reasons: commercial, arbitrary, etc.). So, we decided to do the most unromantic thing we knew. We went to Doc's, which is an extremely cheap family buffet which has mediocre pizza at best, and then went and saw The Departed (an excellent, but fairly violent and wholly unromantic gangster flick).
The next year we did the same thing (I can't remember what movie we saw), thinking that it was a good way to do something together while simultaneously making fun of a pointless "holiday." In fact, we've done the same thing every year since then. It has become our tradition.
This year, as Valentine's Day approached, I was really looking forward to cheap pizza and a cheap movie. I was not, however, thinking about how our activities would satirize consumerism or artificial holidays. Basically, the original point of our "celebration" had been lost and I was just looking forward to doing something fun.
I still look down on Valentine's Day, but apparently Laura and I now have a real tradition that is a lot less ironic than I ever imagined it would be. If I'm being honest, it's probably one of my favorite holiday traditions of the year. I'm not sure what that means, other than serving as evidence that if I do something long enough, it will take on sentimental significance even if the original purpose was to satirize it.
haha - SO true ... and to be even more brutally honest with ourselves, i think our tradition may be slipping even further into a heightened stereotypicality of the holiday evidenced by the fact that the movie we chose to watch this year WAS romantic (The Princess and the Frog) AND we complimented it for the first time with a box of chocolates (See's molasses chews). Next year we may even slide down into the arena of flowers.
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