Rivals to Valentine's Day: Singles Appreciation Day and Parents' Worship Day

02 February, 2013

Valentine's Day will be celebrated on February 14 throughout the world. It is the second most celebrated day after New Year's Day, transcending the religious boundaries. Valentine's Day celebrations have started catching up in India as part of open exhibition of romantic love among youth. It is being said that the western influence and economic liberalization in India has made Valentine's Day thoroughly commercial through sale of gifts, promotion by hospitality industry, event management industry, florists and card industry.

Right wing Hindu groups are hostile to Valentine's Day since they think that it promotes vulgar exhibition of love at public places, it's crass commercialism by multinational corporations, and it indicates disrespect for those who prefer to be singletons.

Even in the West some people are against Valentine's Day due to materialistic distortions caused by vested interests to the noble feeling of love, and have proposed Singles Appreciation Day (SAD) as a rival to Valentine's Day. For the last few years, SAD is being observed as a celebration for singletons to undermine undue romanticism and commercialism associated with Valentine's Day.

It has been rightly said by Jo Courdert, "You do not need to be loved, not at the cost of yourself. The single relationship that is truly central and crucial in a life is the relationship to the self. Of all the people you will know in a lifetime, you are the only one you will never lose."

The promoters of SAD hold that there is a need to respect diversity and those who live happily as singles should be equally recognized to take pride in their single status and enjoy themselves. Those who celebrate SAD, often attend spiritual events; go for camping or volunteering, do social work, and gift giving for oneself for good work.

In India, some religious organisations and social groups had been promoting February 14 to be celebrated as Parents' Worship Day as an alternative to the youth and wean them away from the western culture which was eating into Indian value system. According to the promoters of the Parents Worship Day, this was a celebration of pure selfless love between the parents and children and was meant to develop the spirit of serving parents.

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COMMENTS (1)

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Manish

In India, there is only one accepted and promoted way of serving parents - marry the boy/girl of their choice. That's it. If you do so, you have earned the certificate of a good son/daughter. Whenever there is any talk about love between a man and a woman or a boy and a girl, there are some people who for no substantial or logical reason start comparing it with the relationship and love one shares with his/her parents. That's absolutely absurd. This is no competition. These people have been desperately and quite successfully trying to establish a notion that it a competition. I don't seem to understand, why in India it is so important that you have to love your mother/father more than your spouse. Why can't they both be loved equally?