Audrey Wade, senior

Valentine’s Day. What kind of holiday is it? A day to buy someone something? A day for Hallmark to make millions of dollars? A day for most single women to be bitter?

Hate to break it to you, but Valentine’s Day isn’t even a real holiday anymore. Not for more than 30 years. The Catholic Church removed it from its liturgical calendar, while keeping Valentine a saint. And for a non-holiday it gets an awful lot of credit.

Something that I find a little weird is that as much as some enjoy Valentine’s Day, no one knows where it comes from. And when I say no one knows, I do mean no one.

St. Valentine is a composite of between three and seven people. I realize we all know the history of Christmas, Thanksgiving and Fourth of July but not Valentine’s Day.

For Valentine’s Day, I found 10 versions of its history. Here is a compilation that focuses on just one of the several Valentines. Don’t take it for fact. As I said, no one knows.

Valentine was a Christian who, according to history.com, lived somewhere around 250 A.D. The emperor of the time wouldn’t let soldiers marry, so Valentine did it in secret. Or maybe he was helping Christians escape Roman prisons where they were tortured. Who knows? Anyway, he was arrested, healed the jailer’s blind daughter and then fell in love with the now non-blind daughter. Before he was killed he wrote her a letter signed, “From your Valentine.”

Everyone sigh together at the sweetness … Ewww.

Valentine’s Day (apparently) didn’t start then though. In the 1300s Chaucer wrote a fairy-tale (maybe) that included this special day. Then in the 1800s, Hallmark took off.

With that finished, I must say that there is irony here. Let me point it out.

Valentine’s Day, a Christian based non-holiday, is celebrated like a holiday in schools. Christmas, a Christian based real holiday, is not.

Christmas is now a “winter holiday.”

Great, uhhuh? No 10 Commandments, no praying in schools, no small day to love Jesus and give presents, but we should most definitely celebrate something no one knows the history of by giving candy and cards that will probably be in the trash 10 minutes after being received.

Irony, mixed up choices, alien invasion -- your choice.

Now that we have acknowledged this injustice to the holidays that are still real, there is nothing to do.

This is not a problem that can be solved, but maybe a little rebellion is called for. Sometime in your life rebel against Valentine's Day. Not because you hate the day, are single or forgot, but because it is just not a holiday.