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JoAnn Ross | Why I Hate Valentine’s Day
Romance / February 13, 2008

I’ll admit it. I’ve always hated Valentine’s Day. The pressure began back in first grade, when I stayed awake all night, worrying that I’d be the only kid who didn’t receive a card at the class party. The entire holiday could, in my opinion, be renamed “Unimaginative Consumer-oriented, Entirely Arbitrary and Manipulative, Shallow Interpretation of Romance Created by the Greeting Card, Florist, and Candy Industries to make you feel miserable Day.”Now, I believe in romance. I couldn’t have sustained a career for twenty-five years writing romance novels if I wasn’t a sucker for happily-ever-afters. But there’s so much pressure to have the most romantic night of the year that it’s almost always bound to fail. True romance, in my opinion, comes from those little unplanned gestures that remind you why you fell in love with the guy in the first place. But I do have one evening that will forever shimmer in my mind as a perfect Technicolor romantic experience. Back in 2001, nine days after 9/11, my sweetie and I traveled to Italy for a long-planned vacation. Really, really long-planned. When he’d proposed to me, he promised that some day he’d take me to Rome. Which he knew was…