Thanksgiving is an actual holiday. Since it's only a thing in the Americas AFAIK, I don't know what it's like in stores and such. But from an outsider perspective, it doesn't seem so narrowly focused on families. At least that's not where it came from. It started as a celebration of good harvest and blessings and shit. Being thankful for whatever there was to be thankful for. Which makes sense, because it's not in our nature to be thankful. Even though we all have something.
Valentine's is and has been about romantic love. Advertisers have decided the same. And as you know, advertising is a major influencer. Any other time, I'd be OK with presenting a female coworker with a bottle of something, and a card, if she really saved my ass at work. Around Valentine's, I wouldn't approach a woman with any of that. Not friends, probably not even family. That in itself is kind of fucked. I could see myself doing whatever on Thanksgiving (heck, I don't even spend time with family during "family holidays" like X-mas, because they have families of their own and I'm not inviting myself into their space). I can't be alone thinking like this?
But I feel I'm sort of dragging the thread in a direction it wasn't intended to go. I would have posted this as a separate thread, but I lack the privileges (and the means to make it a quality thread). To briefly answer everyone else, it's not really a matter of being single alone. It's more that my experience with Valentine's is that whenever I'm single, or in a relationship, it's like an ordinary day that gets obnoxious at its worst. But when I'm going through a healing period, trying to focus on myself, being subjected to the thing I'm trying to avoid - for the purpose of "hey, buy our crap" - is actually kind of shitty. So from a personal POV, Valentine's is a net negative. It's not a holiday, and it doesn't have symbolic value. I suppose the question was whether that's an agreeable opinion.
