Ah, the middle of February. This is a time when cherubs shoot arrows at people in an attempt to make them not have a horrible miserable life of loneliness and depression. Yep, the annual season in which you must prove to you love that you value them enough to give them diabetic comas and dead plant genitals. If you really love them, you’ll buy them expensive jewelry that costs you 2 months salary in an attempt to get them to enter into a fiscally responsible business arrangement, with benefits. That might be an overly cynical view about a holiday celebrating the execution of a man by Emperor Claudius II for getting all up in his imperial grill about religion. Really, what does that have to do with giving each other cards, candy, flowers and STDs?
Thank God I’m above all of that commercialism, though. I would never celebrate a holiday that has to have its history completely re-manufactured by American Greetings to gain intense commercial benefit. I would much rather celebrate a holiday created less than a decade ago for the sole purpose of mocking the majority, and commercial benefit. I am, of course, talking about Singles Appreciation Day.
Screw Romance, Singles Appreciation Day is about how awesome YOU are.
Officially, SAD was created in 2005 by Trevor McWanda. This, of course, is a cover story created by clever business types to keep you from knowing the truth: SAD has existed since the very first time a Caveman watched his cave-buddy get nagged by his cave-wife. We have celebrated the joy of singleness ever since in honor of that great Caveman, Unguck. Due to the sketchy nature of cave-calendars, we of course were incapable of pinpointing the exact day in which Unguck first realized how awesome it was to be single, but we have narrowed it down to between February 13 and February 15. Coincidentally, this happens to coincide with a Catholic holiday created to make the noble families of Europe forget that they hated their spouses for a few days, thus perpetuating the royal lines and preventing all of the kings prior to Henry VIII from doing exactly what Henry VIII did.
The traditional celebration of SAD is to give yourself awesome gifts and eat garlic and onion heavy food before passing out in a $2 wine induced coma.
The self-gifts of SAD can be anything that appeals to you as a person, but it is considered bad form to send yourself candies or flowers, as it reminds those not able to celebrate the holiday for various reasons that the secretly hate every moment of their life. Much more sensitive and acceptable gifts include large pizzas, buffalo wings, gallons of bunny tracks ice cream, and other “comfort” foods. Eating these foods publicly has the double benefit of not only eating these delicious foods, but giving our brainwashed friends another excuse to forget themselves by trying to cheer you up. You can usually parlay this into more gifts. SAD is like your birthday and Christmas rolled into one!
Dress for the Occasion
The official clothing color of choice for SAD is green. Green of course is the color of life and happiness, being the opposite of Red the color of love and anger. In recent years, it has become increasingly common to wear the color black. It doesn’t have any particular meaning, black is just a sexy color that looks good on almost everyone. Black also goes really well with green, and that means you’re even more rocking the awesome if you mix the two.
Be sure that when you are picking out your black and green you keep the most important aspect of your clothes in mind, which is how comfortable the clothes are to wear. Again, tradition would tell us that we are probably best off in a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, but you should wear whatever you are most comfortable with on SAD. Just try to avoid anything with heels or that can be easily stained by cheap wine and pizza.
What to do if you’re not single
It’s okay to not be Single on Singles Appreciation Day, there are still a lot of things for you to do in celebration. You could take a break from your significant other for the night, so you can both pretend to be single in observance, or you could go out together with a group of single friends and be the proverbial “third wheels.” The important thing is that, under no circumstances, and no matter how happy you think you are, you should never patronize your single friends, or offer them your advice about relationships.
One last thing — Don’t forget to have a safe and responsible evening!
Don’t drink cheap wine and drive!