Ask Mike: It’s a Love-ly Day in the Neighborhood
Love is in the air. Or is it fear that I smell? With Valentine’s Day just around the corner there’s a whole lot of both wafting around.
For a holiday that’s all about love, February 14 sure inspires a lot of anxiety. Witness the number of questions from folks seeking advice on what to get their sweetie. More than a few have that unmistakable tone of desperation. Fortunately, romantics around world are giving solid (and often creative) recommendations.
And speaking of “around the world,” I asked the community if Valentine’s Day is a global holiday (I was always under the impression that only Americans suffered). Folks responded that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in many countries including Canada, France, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Additionally, many other countries have “similar” holidays. For example, in Chinese culture there is The Night of the Sevens and Iran celebrates Sepandarmazgan, “the celebration of love and earth.” I found a superb answer that covered all kinds of cultures on Yahoo! Answers Canada.
What other holidays are celebrated across different cultures? New Year’s Eve is definitely one of ‘em. Got any others? Leave a comment below.
Thanks for reading,
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
- Rating:
(Be the first!) - Permalink
- Comments (26)
Loading ...
(average 4.75)
Subscribe
Happy Valentine Mike.
Happy V-Day<3
First, me and my boyfriend didn’t give anything to each other as we had an argument just the night before so we basically slept in a separate room. We even talked (before arguement happened) that we don’t need any certain day to make it special as you can make it any day. Perhaps take it to enjoy rather stress on what to give to your partner. In Thailand, we have many holidays related to Buddism. We also have our own Thai new years on April. We do not have Christmas Day as a public holiday except for foreigners’ companies. We have our King’s birthday, Queen’s birthday and a few more related to our royal family as we love our royal family as our holiday.
No matter what day it is, all we want to do is to be happy and enjoy our lives. I hope you all happy and happy valentines day. xxoo
christmas for christians. halloween is celebrated in mexico as the day of the dead. st. patricks day is for christians. easter is for christians. channukah (idk) is celebrated for jewish people across the world. same with passover.
St Valentine and Halloween are imports here, but are becoming gradually more “fashionable”, if not more folkloric.
As for other international holidays, I found a long list in this site:
http://www.earthcalendar.net/_php/lookup.php?mode=country
Still… I’m not sure if that’s reliable. I’ve never heard about many of those.
BTW, I live in Argentina
I don’t believe Valentines Day is so much about “love” as it is commercialism. I was at the grocery store tonight purchasing non-holiday related food items innocently, and I have to say much to my amusement I saw about seven or eight different men purchasing red roses. Was the thought that came to mind “oh, how sweet and romantic?” No, quite the contrary…it was more along the lines of “how generic, can’t they be a little more original?” Roses are so overdone and outdone…and really, how cliche. So, the spouse made the huge sacrifice of his time to run into the quickest corporate grocery store on the way home from his 9-5. How unlovably predictable.
Valentines day is a day for breakups, obviously.
well….I live in Japan and Valentine`s day is celebrated here ……with a twist.
On Valentines day WOMEN give MEN chocolates…and the men are supposed to reciprocate a month later on March 14th (called White Day) with a gift.
And women don`t just give chocolates to their sweethearts, they give them to their friends, co-workers and even bosses!! (those are called “giri-choco” meaning obligation or duty chocolates)
Val’s Day (I’ve shortened the name for convenience) is celebrated in Ghana, West Africa.
For some years now it was realised that a lot of people were taking the celebration as a license to have pre-marital & extra-marital sex.
As a result of this many Ghanaian churches & organisations started organising dinners, seminars & retreats strictly for married/engaged couples to emphasize the need to renew ones vows etc. In fact, a radio station in Accra, Ghana’s capital, will be organising a mass wedding ceremony today for couples who can’t afford it!
Ghana produces the best quality cocoa (cacao) beans which are used for chocolates all over the world. The government therefore decided in 2007 to rename Val’s Day as “Chocolate Day” to encourage Ghanaians to patronise the local chocolate.
In conclusion, I’ve known about Val’s Day since I was in secondary school( the 70’s). We used to wish one another “A Happy Valentine’s Day”. The tradition was to wish all friends before 12 noon.
People should be shown love at all times so I do send wishes my family members and friends on Val’s Day, but I believe we should try and make everyday in our lives a Lovely Val’s Day!!
looking for a gril
make friendships
Having recently broken up with my boyfriend of three years, this is a very difficult day for me. I don’t think we’ll ever be back together, as we acted in very hurtful ways the last two weeks we were breaking up, commensurate with the passion we had always felt. He never failed to send me flowers on Valentine’s Day. I want to wish those in love a wonderful day. Nurture your love.
Valentines is a day to give a special person some recognition of the Love you share, so many people don’t have the time in there every day schedules to recognize every one in there lives every day, I know people around the world and I take this day to let them all know how much they are all thought of every day. Lets make Love Global, Not Commercial LOVE MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND !!!!
HAPPY VALENTINES DAY TO ALL
<3 I LOVE YOU<3
nice
Valentines Day Celebrates THOSE that stiiiill have a heart~
Admit and accept what is needed to change in your OWN personalities.
Maybe the grief that revisits and causes mood issues and loss of
happiness is from NOT facing OTHER the improvements you need to make
in yourselves. OUR loss of a loved one becomes an excuse to feel
lousy and we allow it to RULE our lives, THUS avoiding our growth
that occurs when we make changes to ourselves.
Then your moods will release you from their grip fooooor eeeever,and reactions become MORE appropriate to the current situations~.
Cherish the PEOPLE in YOUR lives and baby your husband a bit if
you have one … so that HE may feel strength beyond his
comprehension. Once we get used to this kind of living…
well,,,,it becomes WHO we are. LOL, If we can spoil our men, we can
BE the Beeeeeeest MA MA’s!
I GIVE GOD the GLORY for thew lessons He teaches me, I PRAISE JEsus
for teaching ME to WALK.
well
Happy Valentines Day Mike
Valentine’s Day is for lovers! Im currently single.
Valentines? Love is in the air? LMAO. I know he ain’t talkin’ to me. This doesn’t apply in my agenda today.
I’ve never been single and not received anything on this day. I’m 26 and married now so hopefully, I never won’t! I got a dozen PINK roses! They are so pretty! Russel Stover and Elmer box Chocolates, a red basket w/ lots of sweet tart/lollipops (so using that red basket for decorating!), snickers, a small cuddly elephant, and a SUPER SOFT BEAR ( Softest ever)! My husband is so sweet, he wrote such a nice poem too and gave me a card! GEEZ. LOL! I thought the roses were enough!
This was my very first Valentines Day. The person who I’ve been getting to know over the past month gave me the best Valentines Day gift ever. First he surprised me a few times. Well then he sent me these beautiful flowers. Instead of sending me the typical red roses I got a bouquet of assortment of flowers. What was sweet was that each flower of different. Today I got a beautiful poem writen by him. Valentines Day is very overated and very commercialized. This guy that I’m getting to know gave me special Valentines Day gifts that were from the heart. He didn’t go out and just buy me something he planned out his Valentines Day gifts. He put though and effort into them. He’s a great guy and I can’t wait to spend many more Valentines Days with him. <3
both
being from way , way out in the sticks , we didn’t care what date we got what . we almost never waited until christmas to give gifts. heck , our tree was usually down by then .but one time a yr. we’d celebrate ” hey yall , come have fun day , all welcome bring fiddle or musical instrument if you have one . barefoot fine day “and over a hundred people would meet at momo’s and papa’a old run down southern mansion ,it had high ceilings , huge rooms, an all the around house big porch with big pillars . it was cool, it had been a beautiful place and the land and yard still were . the house was not . there was a fireplace that was back to back one side in the kitchen and one in the living room it was stable , but that’s about it . they could play some music too. papa had a song he made up called” the dogs chasin the fox” . we played outside the grown ups danced inside, outside and on the porch . the house was torn up, food galore! no one cared how they dressed either, but when i became a teenager that changed, there were a lot of good- looking boys out that way . no one caused trouble. usually no alcahol, unless somebody snuck some of there own . and it was talked about for yrs. it was so hot but you don’t remember that so much . the good music, fellowsship, food, fun and BOYS is what i think of . i love rock in roll , but i still can’t help but love some bluegrass because of it . country music , i hated and still do, think i’d loved it since i wuz so dang country, huh ? i had a date with a rich guy and took him to the celebration fiddlin . he said i was as country as a pine tree and i’ve never kown if that was an insult or not . what do you think ? i thought pine trees were pretty ok. i could climb most of them . had to when ol red (the cow) got after me. that was a yearly thing. for around 25 yrs. i miss it. but i coulnd’t bare my house being treated like that one on that night , no fiddle players still alive in my immediate family . and the name i have up there is the real name .. allof it . the flyer had those words .including the barefoot part . underneath were directions and phone numbers, who to call to see what to bring. stuff like that. i’m a real nerd . does it sound like it could possibly be fun these days to anyone ? i’d like to know . i also went to rock concerts in shreveport sometimes so it wasn’t all i had to do .with all the stuff today i can’t see it happening . too bad .oh one more thing . before it ended for good some started sneaking in pot and stuff. it was starting to get a little different but the music was first class. if i remember a few had been on the grand ol oprera ( i don’t know how to spell that or even if the name is right } but it was some kind of big deal to get on it . i’m sayin you had to be good . a sorry musican couldn’t make it . it was a holiday for everyone in those parts . i found momo kissin a man that wasn’t papa at one , first time i’ve ever snitched on her is now. lol
Actually, I did a little research on Valentine’s Day and discovered that Saint Valentine is one of three martyrs…and their deaths really had nothing to do with love but for the Catholic Church. Unless you read the medieval best seller “The Golden Legend: Or Lives Of The Saints” which tells of one Saint Valentine passing a note (signed by “Your Valentine”) to his sweetie before he was killed. But it’s a book of legends, not fact (which, I guess, is not much different than Santa Claus).
Then there’s Chaucer’s poem “The Parlement of Foules”, which first cited Valentines Day as a day of romance.
It really is a dumb holiday. And I don’t want chocolate (to make me fat), flowers (that will die in three to seven days), or diamonds (which may have come from a conflict zone).
Sorry this is late. I don’t check in every day.
wow that is just wow
This is late comments about valentines but any how it’s too early for valentines day next year yes vd is the day for loveones not only a spouse,partner or lover is also for your family and friends
comment posted on February2008at 7:38p.m by evelyn lim