We don’t get too carried away on Valentines day at our house. Our point of view (mostly from my wife) is that it doesn’t take one day per year to express our love to each other, rather it’s better to spend 365 days per year doing that. So, needless to say, we don’t get too carried away on gifts on this day. It has become a tradition to make each other a card, with our own words in it, rather than buy one. This has nothing to do with money. (In fact, I think we end up spending more than a couple cards worth when we do this)
This year, I decided to write her a poem. It was titled “I Still” and proceeded to list many of the things that I still feel about her. It took a little while to come up with that, but I knew that she liked the card because she had tears in her eyes and I got a big long hug after she read it. To me, that moment is more priceless than any box of candy I could have bought her. (I was instructed years ago, to never buy her candy or cut flowers).
The next Valentine I made was for our daughter. She is 2 and a half and really loves to get excited about each holiday. I made her a large pink heart that was folded in half to make a card. Inside I glued a picture of my wife and I and then wrote her a little note. I think she really liked it. That doesn’t compare with the roughly 15 valentines I’ve gotten from her, but I guess it will have to do.
Anyway, it’s another day to be grateful that I have them both in my life and that we have so much love amongst the three of us.
Delhi Engineer says
Hi elym:
I totally agree with you about the “not needing one day to express the love for your wife”. We follow this at home too. It is more apt to be grateful that you have your wife/kid in your life and feel happy about it.
Delhiengineer
Caitlin says
Us too! (So I thanked my commenters for valentine’s day so i could get something “extra” out of the day)
claire says
ELYM, This is a nice post.
It sounds a lot like our house. We make each other cards (altho we both have a weakness for expensive handmade papers and origami paper so it probably would be cheaper to just buy cards). We also make cards for our son (age 2). This year he got really into doing “shake-a shake-a” with the glitter cannister, so we got some very gluey, glittery cards from him.
Here’s to appreciating our families in simple ways and not jumping on the consumer bandwagon.