By Poppy-Anne Turner, Teesside University
Saint Valentine is an enigmatic figure theologically, with his title as a saint being deliberated amongst Christians, Catholics, historians and academics alike. There is significant ambiguity surrounding who Saint Valentine was, with some accounts advocating that there may have been two figures named Valentine, both believed to have died as martyrs for the Christian faith on the 14th of February (Baker, 1905; Morgan, 2016). Despite this religious uncertainty, the contemporary celebration of Valentine’s Day owes little to Saint Valentine himself, instead emerging through literary and cultural developments, most notably Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls, where Valentine’s Day was associated with romantic coupling (Hales, 1882; Schmidt, 1993). It is this cultural reinterpretation, rather than religious tradition, that paved the way for Valentine’s Day as it is recognised today.
Valentine’s Day is a cultural phenomenon built on the predicate of love and appreciation for others. It is comprised of gift giving, and overt expressions of gratefulness for our peers, whether that be our romantic partners, our friends or our family members. Yet public attitudes to this phenomenon are deeply polarised, with its social and cultural consequences widely disputed. On the one hand, some view this holiday to have some beneficial impacts and consequently conform to the conventions associated with this cultural phenomenon. On the other, critics argue that it promotes a marketized version of romance, fostering expectations that love should be expressed through monetary exchange (Shanini, 2024). Individuals who express such concerns are often dismissed as ‘buzzkills’, positioned in opposition to the dominant framing of Valentine’s Day as a celebration of love. Afterall, how harmful can a holiday be if its stated aim is to promote love? Adopting ultra-realist theoretical contributions, and harm as a central point of focus, this blog post intends to dissect this debate. To situate this theory into the context of valentine’s day, this blog seeks to interrogate this assumption.
It is interesting to note that the shift towards Valentine’s Day as a materialistic and marketised holiday began in the West during the 18th century, when the holiday became commercialised through the introduction of Valentine’s Day cards (Holloway, 2020). At this time in England, such cards functioned as a form of social control, used to maintain social order through comedic commentary on behaviours which were deemed undesirable, aiming to create a form of self-governance and moral policing (see Pollen, 2014). Such expectations of self-governance were linked to undesirable characteristics such as poor hygiene practices and drunkenness. This motif can arguably be seen in modern society, with cards being designed to outline socially desirable characteristics such as beauty, romance, and emotional availability. But, more broadly, cards in modern society use this to express appreciation for another person and, in most cases, to either strengthen a current relationship or form a new one. This use of material goods to represent coupling has caused an argument that Valentine’s Day is very much consumer oriented, causing much opposition and debate surrounding the materialistic nature of this holiday (see Shani and Shankar, 2006).
As Valentine’s Day became increasingly consumer-oriented, this marketisation has produced a range of interconnected social, psychological, and environmental harms. Research on the ‘Valentine’s Day blues’ demonstrates that individuals who do not receive gifts or participate in dominant romantic rituals are more likely to experience anxiety, loneliness, and depressive symptoms in the period surrounding the holiday, with these effects disproportionately affecting women and younger adults who are more exposed to normative romantic expectations (Lange et al., 2022). Alongside these affective harms, Donohoe (2008) demonstrates that many of the commodities most closely associated with Valentine’s Day, such as cut flowers, gold jewellery, and diamonds, are produced through industries linked to environmental degradation, serious health risks for workers, forced and precarious labour, and, in the case of diamonds and gold, the financing of violent conflict.
This materialism is promoted institutionally, with corporations advertising about the holiday through electronic communications and product displays, with many customers being aware of their attempts to encourage consumption (see Close and Zinkhan, 2004). Despite this awareness, the majority still turn to corporations and the material goods they offer to overtly display their feelings for another person. This can be understood through fetishistic disavowal (see Black, 2025). Fetishistic disavowal is a process by which we dispel knowledge which makes us uncomfortable so that we can continue our lives in ignorance of social reality (Kotzé and Lloyd, 2022; Winlow, 2019). In the context of Valentine’s Day this is made explicitly as many consumers ignore the social reality of the fact that corporations are exploiting their wish to provide material goods for their loved ones in favour of increasing capital accumulation. This allows a process of naturalisation to occur, whereby consumption is normalised even as its associated harms are simultaneously recognised and disavowed.
From a Lacanian perspective, Valentine’s Day can be understood through a superegoic command to enjoy, where subjects are invited to express love, but also compelled to demonstrate enjoyment in recognisable and publicly legible ways. Žižek (2008) extends this insight by arguing that late capitalism intensifies the command to enjoy, transforming enjoyment into a moral obligation that individuals must continually perform, often through consumption. Valentine’s Day exemplifies this process by positioning romantic happiness as something that must be actively displayed through gifts and experiences, rendering failure to enjoy as a form of personal inadequacy. However, the pressures generated by Valentine’s Day do not simply divide subjects into those who successfully participate and those who are excluded. Drawing on Winlow and Hall’s (2013) critique of social exclusion, exclusion here is better understood not as a position outside the system, but as a differentiated form of participation within it, shaped by the same desires, aspirations, and symbolic reference points as those deemed included. Individuals who are single, financially constrained, or disenchanted with the holiday are therefore not removed from its socio-symbolic logic. Rather than exiting the socio-symbolic order, those positioned as ‘excluded’ often seek alternative routes back into it.
Abstaining from Valentine’s Day has become quite popular over the past few years, particularly since the introduction of ‘Galentine’s Day.’ Galentine’s Day was introduced to celebrate friendships between women, with gifts and cards often being exchanged (Griffiths, 2025). Sound familiar? That’s because it is. This product of abstinence demonstrates how attempting to withdraw from social conventions can be ineffective, and how abstinence can create desire which can be temporarily fulfilled by the commodities which intend to replace the abstained object (Kotzé, 2020). However, there is a sense of irony created by this attempt to withdraw from such social conventions by using Galentine’s Day as a conduit, an irony which is embedded within the capitalist system which runs society. As Lloyd (2017) has outlined, the durability of capitalism is derived from its ability to create the space for forms of resistance to occur within its confines. Galentine’s Day arguably demonstrates this as it is comprised by similar features to that of valentine’s day: the provision of presents; the distribution of material goods; consumerism; and capital accumulation for corporations. This demonstrates capitalism’s malleability and capacity to accommodate resistance to work in the systems favour (see McGowan, 2016), which in this case is through the sociosymbolic environment it fosters. There is an argument to be made that, as a result of the sociosymbolic environment created by capitalism, even individuals who intend to abstain from consumer-based holidays end up participating in different forms (Kotzé, 2020), as evidenced by Galentine’s Day.
Combined together, both Valentine’s Day and Galentine’s Day illustrate how late-stage capitalist culture organises intimacy through consumption. What appears as choice, resistance, or abstention is repeatedly folded back into the same socio-symbolic framework that ties love and recognition to market participation. By mobilising ultra-realist insights drawn from Lacanian psychoanalysis and theories of social harm, this post has demonstrated how Valentine’s Day operates as a mechanism that structures desire, compels enjoyment, and reproduces environmental, emotional, and human harms while sustaining the illusion of meaningful agency.
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