Valentine’s Day: You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide

Valentine's Day falls on a Monday this year. They do this every now and then so lonely single people won't be made to feel bad when they go looking for a meaningless weekend hookup and find themselves surrounded by happy couples in love. Holding Valentine's Day on a Monday allows the unattached one more year of denying the misery of their largely pointless existence. At the same time, it affords those in committed, long-term relationships to justify saving a few bucks by skipping the celebration entirely in favor of another seemingly endless night at home with the one we continue to love, despite everything. Far from just taking the hint and skipping Valentine's Day altogether, the hospitality industry goes to extraordinary lengths to lure you and your wallet out into the night -- or, in the case of some of the more demographically targeted offerings, the late afternoon. When VD falls on Monday, that turns the celebration into a three-day Festival of Special Offers that demonstrates, if nothing else, that restaurants have marketing departments. So if you, like me, are going to grudgingly consider acquiescing one more time to a society bent on leveraging Hallmark's commercial vision into something similar in scale to Halloween but...Read more