It feels like every year young love is turned into an ode to money, especially on Feb. 14. Buy your girlfriend chocolates, and flowers, or else you don’t love her.

Admittedly, every holiday is commercialized. Christmas has all the gift-giving, and Halloween has us buying large bags of sugar rot for the kids to feast on, but often forgotten is Valentine’s Day.

Men tend to spend twice as much as women, and in 2024 the total annual spending on Valentine’s day was 25.8 billion dollars. Apparently, we’re all having babies for Valentine’s Day, and that baby is made of money. Yep. Writing this as I birth my money baby. He’s coming out.

Jokes aside, holidays and consumer culture are almost hand in hand. Consumer culture and the study of it starts with consumer culture theory, which is the study of consumerism from a social and cultural perspective as opposed to an economic one.

We as a culture have decided that gifts have meaning. The meaning is derived from something being given in of itself, and companies are capitalizing on not just young love with Valentine’s Day but the concept of love itself as love comes from action, which they have almost monopolized.

Capitalism involves consumerism as it’s made, and it’s not like it’s bad, our nation and economy runs on it, but the truth is we don’t need to buy that vase and those flowers, or that perfume, or any sort of gift to show that we love someone. Show your significant other that you love them this valentine’s day by speaking from the heart and really telling them how you feel.

Or don’t and just buy them a card.