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Home > Blogs > Adventures in Motherhood > Archives > 2010 > February > 11 > Entry
Boys lukewarm (at best) about Valentine’s Day
Across the world on Sunday, people of all ages will celebrate love and romance.
Handmade cards will be exchanged, crushes expressed, rings presented, lifetimes joined and so on, during the heart-peppered 24 hours that will make up Valentine’s Day 2010.
However, none of these occurrences, near or far, will matter to at least one segment of the population … 8- to 10-year-old boys.
These little male grade-schoolers are between the ages of when they make sweet and frilly cards for their mothers and when they write sweet and frilly notes to girls.
For my sons, who both fall in this less-than-lovey-dovey window, the chasm was most evident recently when classroom lists were sent home for their respective Valentine’s Day parties.
I found the lists in the boys’ school folders, and asked them if they wanted to come with me to the store to pick out valentines.
“Could you just pick them up?” they asked, looking over their shoulders during a video game.
“Just try to get something funny,” the older one added.
It is just like when they need pants. As long as they aren’t too embarrassing, they don’t care a whole lot what they look like. They would just rather avoid the whole process.
Then the 8-year-old asked: “Why do they celebrate Valentine’s Day again?”
“Well, love and romance,” I said.
“Oh, yeahhh.”
I started to think that not only did they not have any love for the beauty that can be Valentine’s Day, but they might even regard it as the least endearing holiday on the calendar — less special even than clunkers like Groundhog Day or Columbus Day.
But, just to confirm my suspicion, a few days later I did a little experiment. I asked each of my sons to rank 15 “holidays” on a given list — from Earth Day to Christmas — in order of importance to them.
The younger only had one question, but asked it repeatedly about various holidays: “Do we get off school for that?”
He then added, somewhat seriously: “It’s important to me if I get off school.”
Unfortunately, even though it’s on a weekend this year, Valentine’s Day wasn’t helped by that criteria overall. It came in 14th out of 15 on the third-grader’s list, beating only Columbus Day.
The fifth-grader didn’t ask any questions (as is his way), finished his paper and handed it to me. I was surprised to see Valentine’s Day in fifth place, and thought maybe I had misjudged him.
“Wow,” I said, “Valentine’s Day is pretty high up there.”
“Well, it is named after a saint!” he said. “And, there’s a whole movie named after it, and all you see in the stores in February is about Valentine’s Day, blah, blah, blah.”
“But I asked you to rank them in importance to you,” I said.
“Oh.”
Long pause.
“Well, then it is probably closer to 10th,” he said, “since you can get candy and all.”
That made more sense … at least for this year.
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