It's saccharine, heterosexist and tasteless - so you won't care if you don't get a St Valentine's card, will you? Fionola Meredith reports.
The high-octane emotional intensity of the teenage years is never more fully experienced than in the anxious wait at the top of the stairs on the morning of February 14th. Will a St Valentine's Day card slip through the letterbox?
The burst of hysterical joy and relief when the longed-for missive arrives, its red envelope promising tantalising contents, is rarely matched in adult experience. So once we're safely past the adolescent days of scribbling lovelorn declarations on our schoolbooks, most of us shouldn't really need to bother with St Valentine's Day. Right?
Clare (32) certainly thinks so. She's lived with her partner, Brendan, for 10 years, and they have three primary-school age children.
"There's no way I'd send Brendan a Valentine's card," she says. "To be honest, I'd feel embarrassed. They're so saccharine sweet, all doe-eyed bunnies and sentimental verses: nothing to do with the reality of most people's relationships. I'd say we have a good partnership, one that's grown stronger with time. I agree that it's important to show your partner you love and appreciate them, but I'd much rather do it an individual way, and on a day of my own choosing - certainly not by sending a formulaic card on the 14th of February. It's a day for kids, not adults."
But there's no doubt many grown-up couples continue to mark the occasion, year after year. Dinner and roses, rather than a winsomely gooey card, are St Valentine's Day essentials for Paul's wife, Lynn. But while Paul (40) has little time for the lovey-dovey day, he feels he has to participate, for his wife's sake.
"I hate the inflated prices, and the restaurants full of couples billing and cooing - or pretending to!" he says. "I'd rather ignore the whole thing, but I know Lynn would take it as a huge personal rejection. Going through the romantic motions is really important to her."
It's fair to say that women set more store by St Valentine's Day and all its trimmings than men. After all, from early childhood onwards, women are taught to invest romantic love with an almost mystical significance. Later, women's magazines provide endless advice on creating, nurturing and maintaining that precious flame in relationships. And it's true that many modern women still find the old-fashioned romantic values of tenderness, mystery, adoration and reverence incredibly seductive. So it's hardly surprising that the gallantry of St Valentine's Day is so popular with the female half of the population.
But does the hyper-idealised, starry-eyed version of love celebrated on St Valentine's Day create an impossibly unrealistic view of long-term relationships? And how can we value such relationships if they're constantly forced to measure up to the frenetic, roller-coaster emotions of the early days, as though these were the only markers of "true love"?
Yvonne Jacobson, of Marriage and Relationship Counselling Services (MRCS), in Dublin warns: "While Valentine's Day can remind us to take time to celebrate our intimate relationships, it does tend to commercialise and over-romanticise them. Of course, romantic ideals are essential in the early days - otherwise none of us would ever begin a relationship in the first place! But it's when people continue to maintain these unrealistic expectations well into long-term relationships that they become inappropriate, and problems occur.
"The worst casualties of Valentine's Day are the couples in unhappy relationships. They really get their noses rubbed in it."
Others who may feel alienated from the St Valentine's Day proceedings include members of the gay community. Some homosexual couples say that because the day is such an overt display of dominant heterosexuality, they simply can't participate. Among those who do, celebrations tend to take place in private.
Brian Finnegan, editor of Dublin-based Gay Community News (GCN) says: "Of course, Valentine's Day is a completely heterosexist institution. For instance, go into any commercial card shop and you certainly won't find any Valentine's cards saying 'from my man to my man'. It just doesn't happen.
"Going out for a celebratory dinner can be a problem too. There aren't any restaurants in Dublin where gay couples would feel comfortable publicly showing affection to each other. The restaurant itself may be perfectly friendly, but gay couples just don't feel safe, because there's no way of knowing who's dining in the restaurant, and how they may react. Really, it's an issue of limitations on how we express ourselves."
For some, the biggest barrier to participating in the St Valentine's Day rituals is the sheer tastelessness of it all. Carol (33) can't stand it: "I'm currently single, so thank God I don't have to join in with the Valentine's Day nonsense this year. So much of it is just plain naff - the heart-shaped helium balloons, those horrible satin padded cards. And it's all so unthinking - obediently queuing up to buy red roses just because everyone else is doing it. Where's the spontaneity?"
Perhaps the only way to cope with February 14th is to succumb completely to its excesses, allowing resistance to dissolve in a sea of kitsch. Cultural commentator and food writer Nigella Lawson, a recent convert to St Valentine's Day, admits to being seduced by the naffness of it all.
"Sooner or later, you yield to the potency of the cute," she says. "I only wish it could have been later."
So bring on the fluffy teddies. After all, a life of dignity, self-respect and immaculate taste can be resumed on February 15th.