Love, self care and St Valentine

As soon as the Christmas items have gone on clearance sale in the drug store, the aisles are transformed into a sea of red hearts and Valentine promotion season has begun! It's easy to become cynical about all the fuss!  St Valentine's Day, February 14th, is the busiest day of the year for florists.  Jewelers and chocolate makers get pretty excited as well! Out of curiosity, I Googled the top gifts for Valentine's Day: in 2021 Jewelry came in top place with $4.1 billion spent, followed by an evening out ($2.8 billion), clothing ($2.7 billion), flowers  and candy tied at $2 billion each. That's $13.6 billion spent on this one holiday! No wonder retailers start salivating in January! 

I have taken a couple of classes recently that talked about self care, stress reduction and the like. It got me thinking about the whole commercial gift-giving scene. Holidays like Valentine's Day seethe with pressure and expectation. The pressure to give the right gift, the anticipation (often disappointed) of what we will receive. Google (they have all the answers, don't they?) says that the worst ideas include kitchen appliances, cheap chocolates, heart shaped trinkets and dead flowers! 

So what to give instead? There seems to be a trend towards giving experiences instead of stuff. I know a few families that took a family vacation lieu of Christmas presents; the result is way less stress for the parents and memories to last a lifetime for everyone! One thing COVID has shown us is that tomorrow is not guaranteed. Maybe a good Valentine's gift would be a shared experience with your significant other...like a photo session for example!  You don't have to arrange it before the 14th- buy a gift certificate and redeem it at leisure.  Or celebrate "Galentine's Day" with a photo session with your girlfriends. Get your hair and makeup done, have pictures together, then go out on the town afterwards!

So, as St Valentine's Day approaches, think about creating memories with your love or your best friend. What kind of images would they like to create? Gift certificates are available now!