There’s this holiday coming up. And it’s based on a Roman fertility festival or the mating season of birds — however birds manage to mate under all those feathers — but named after some Christian saint who died a horrible death, the way saints tend to do. Actually, it’s named after one of three saints, we don’t know which. But they all died horrible deaths, and that’s the important thing.

So you’d think this Valentine’s Day deal would be in honor of sex or martyrdom (or, in a pinch, eggs or the vomitorium), but instead, it’s some sort of National Day of Romance. Granted, eggs, sex, horrible death and nausea are all intrinsically linked to romance, but they’re not exactly synonyms for it.

I can’t write a cynical column about how stupid Valentine’s Day is; I did that last year. Besides, I like Valentine’s Day. People wear red, and sometimes they give you chocolate hearts, and whatever’s going on in your personal life, there’s that holiday-type atmosphere. It always reminds me of the mornings before elementary-school classroom parties, when the official class dork (female) is miserable in a lace-trimmed velvet dress her mother made her wear (it itched, too), when there’s a mother or so stapling pink construction paper to the back wall and rummaging through shopping bags of frosted cookies, when even the teacher can’t pretend to care about multiplication, when your teeth hum with anticipating the mountains of sucrose they’ll plow through before the day is over. It’s a break in the routine, an excuse to celebrate — even if what you’re celebrating makes absolutely no sense.

Because it doesn’t. First of all, why would elementary schoolers celebrate romance? You don’t take your great-uncle out to dinner on Mother’s Day or leave an Easter basket for your rabbi. What conception of romance could small children possibly have, besides “Eric and me are going together, but we don’t ever go anywhere and holding hands is icky”?

(Come to think of it, my love life has never again reached the level of activity it enjoyed in elementary school, but that’s beside the point.)

And speaking of conception, don’t health classes generally carry the message of “No! No! No!”? Urging the observance of fertility festivals seems counterproductive.

OK, so does Valentine’s Day make sense for people who are old enough to celebrate their fertility without freaking out school administrators? No, not really. If you’re not in a relationship, it’s somewhat akin to celebrating the Feast of All Tails — which, thank goodness, is nowhere on our calendar — when yours fell off in utero. If you are in a relationship, it’s the breeding ground for all sorts of comical gender-based misunderstandings that you otherwise wouldn’t have fought about until your anniversary.

Of course there’s also the whole celebration-of-romance thing, for the paired-up among us. And that’s nice, until you think about the trappings: a fistful of plant genitalia, a mild aphrodisiac, maybe even a piece of decoration to enhance one’s appearance of wealth and therefore fertility. At its root, as with so many social rituals, it’s all about getting laid.

Besides, there’s romance and then there’s romance. There’s buying your significant other flashy presents on set occasions, and then there’s cheerfully driving him/her all over creation with his/her broken leg. The two may be able to coexist, but if forced to choose, I think most of us would rather celebrate the second kind. Or live it, and to hell with holidays.

Except that “to hell with holidays” maroons us at class or work every weekday, year in and year out, until we retire or die or run screaming into the Australian rain forest to slay cassowaries for meat and feathers.

That’s why I’m not saying Valentine’s Day is stupid, even though it is. Celebrating is good for the soul. Every day of the everyday pounds you down a little; you need a break in the routine every now and then so you can breathe slowly and expand back to your original height. Flowers and pink cookies, cards that trigger the gag reflex, radio countdowns of gooey love songs — they don’t belong to a normal day. They let you know it’s time to recharge.

So what if Valentine’s Day makes no sense? It’s dumb fun. Harmless escapism, like all those movies that end at the prom.

Anyway, who ever said things have to make sense? If you think about it, nothing does, really. Even math depends on the arbitrary assignment of invented symbols to imperfectly perceived concepts.

Maybe if you don’t feel like honoring romance this Valentine’s Day, you can instead take some time to celebrate the infinite absurdity of the universe, of which this holiday is merely an example. I may just do both.

Jackie May ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in English.