& Shavonne Farley, Contributing Writer ’24
Originating as a Christian feast day honoring the martyr Valentine, Valentine’s Day is a celebration of romance and love in many regions around the world. While affection isn’t limited to this day, it is the one day a year that is specifically put aside to appreciate one’s significant other, showing their unconditional love for their partners with gifts they can treasure forever. And who doesn’t feel unconditionally loved at the expense of a two-dollar Ring Pop?
With that said, the following is a compilation of exactly what (not) to get your significant other this Valentine’s season. Take this advice at your own discretion, though if you fall into the category of notoriously bad gift giver, this may just be for you.
- Cheap ill-conceived flowers. (Take the price tag off, at least. Let’s keep some mystery alive.)
One of the most notorious Valentine’s Day presents is flowers. There’s nothing exactly wrong with them (if you’re into imprudent genericism), but choosing the wrong ones could make or break a relationship. (It’s just statistics. One in every one marriage ends at the hands of incorrectly picked flowers—again, don’t check those data sets). Flowers are a sure way to show one’s devotion to their partner, but when choosing them, it is imperative that they are chosen with precision. In other words, choose what you know your partner would like. If they hate the color yellow, don’t buy a bouquet with that color. If they love blue, buy them those ugly dyed blue daisies even if they are contaminated with known carcinogens and will probably give them cancer. But, more important than all of these factors, is taking off the tag. Do you really want your partner to know you just paid seven dollars for their love? There’s nothing wrong with inexpensive presents—it’s not like we’re all Jeff Bezos—but you can surely afford some sophistication.
- A generic gift card. (That $6.00 Visa purchase fee doesn’t make it any more personal!)
Where does your partner shop the most? When you look at their clothes or their closet, what is their most purchased brand? Just because you can answer those questions doesn’t mean you’re special. (Step off your high horse. Their mother could name every brand they’ve ever shopped and then some. Do you think you’re more knowledgeable than a mother? You wish.) It surely doesn’t give you the right to simply buy them a quick gift card to that store and call it a present. But, at the end of the day, gifts are gifts, so if you can’t think of anything else to do, knock yourself out of the park with your sad little plastic card, at least there was a little thought to it. It could always be worse. Like, for one, buying a generic Visa gift card or one to somewhere you have literally never seen them go. Let’s play out this scenario, shall we? You walk into your partner’s room and hand them a nicely wrapped present, to which they open it and find a Kentucky Fried Chicken gift card staring at them like a menacing apparition. At this point, they will likely either break up with you or throw it out a window and pretend they never saw it, both sensible responses to such a traumatic vision. The most effective way to avoid this response is to make your gift personal, not generic. Instead of giving a plastic gift card, offer to physically take them to a store they like and buy them something (at a reasonable price). Besides, you can now claim to be the epitome of eco-friendliness by not wasting plastic; you just saved your relationship and a turtle!
- Jewelry in the wrong metal. (If you don’t know if your partner likes gold or silver, just ask! …Or stalk their Pinterest boards. For subtlety’s sake.) A wise woman, Leslie Caron in Vincente Minnelli’s 1958 Gigi, once said the following: “A necklace is love! A ring is love! / A rock from some obnoxious little king is love!…” and such has never been more true than when it’s the season of love. Jewelry gifting has been a prominent aspect of cultures dating back nearly 25,000 years. Early societies donned these garnishings in order to ward off bad luck, then gifting these jewels to bring safety over long journeys to others. Jewelry promised wealth, fertility, luck, and love, creating a meaningful bond between the gifter and the receiver through ancient times. In modern times, though, the extravagant sapphire or convex diamond is far less common a gift to give than a simple gold necklace or slim silver ring. There is nothing wrong with this simplification of gift-giving, but what’s important is (much like the flower gifting) determining what suits your partner. Gold and silver jewelry have been largely worn for centuries, and many find that one compliments their skin better than the other. When buying a piece of jewelry, one should attempt to choose the color by their partner’s preferences to make for a better gift. Besides, you wouldn’t want to upset a multi-millennium-spanning tradition, would you?
- A singing stuffed animal. (Pro: this is technically two gifts in one! Con: the second gift is nightmares.) In March of 2024, there is to be released a new horror movie, Imaginary, surrounding the life of a woman returning to her childhood home only to discover that her old teddy bear is very animated and very unhappy that she abandoned him. In other words, it’s an upcoming supernatural film about a creepy teddy bear that terrorizes its owner. A similar story goes as follows. A couple enters a mall, hoping to go on a fun shopping spree, but stops short when seeing a Build-A-Bear Workshop. After some conniving, one partner convinces the other to go in and buy a stuffed bear, making sure to pay the extra fee for the bear to sing a jolly little tune. When they leave the mall that day, the couple is content and just as in love as before, satisfied with their purchase and excited they now have a memory they can cherish forever. This didn’t happen. Why? Because Hollywood got one thing right: singing stuffed animals are scary and omnipotent beings and should be feared like the poltergeist himself. Gifting stuffed animals is a reasonable thing to do, but gifting singing stuffed animals? Why not just take your partner to the zoo? You get the same ambiance without the unharmonious night terrors.
- The promise that your gift is “definitely coming sometime this week!” (One doesn’t need a foreign language degree to translate this to “I ordered your gift last night.”) Unlike those tricky, unpredictable holidays such as the ever-changing Easter, Valentine’s Day is not known for switching things up. Pope Gelasius declared February 14 the official date of Valentine’s Day during the late 5th century, and it seems as though society hasn’t had much of an issue with that declaration since. For the more temporally challenged individuals seeking Valentine’s Day offerings, make sure to order gifts before the week of Valentine’s Day: that is, ideally, before February 7th. If you do find that, somehow, February 14th has snuck up on you when you were least expecting it and you stand on the eve of the holiday empty-handed, don’t worry! Corporeal, three-dimensional stores do exist, and chances are, at least one is within driving distance of your home.
At the end of the day, a present does not often break a relationship (unless that present is an engagement ring to another individual, of course). One mischosen flower or ill-conceived piece of jewelry is not utterly detrimental, merely a small way out of a myriad to show appreciation for a significant other. Let these suggestions be just that, suggestions. If you bought your partner a gift card for Valentine’s Day already, the world isn’t over. And if you’re now feeling like you need to get something else, just buy her an elephant or something cheap as an extra minuscule trinket of appreciation. That or a tiger, they seem to be quite the rave these days.
