For most of my twenties, Valentine's Day was a referendum on my relationship status, and it carried more weight than it deserved. Then I had kids, and somewhere in the chaos of cutting out construction-paper hearts at 9 p.m. for a class party, the whole holiday quietly changed shape. It stopped being about romance and became about the people I actually spend February evenings with, who happen to be three feet tall and very into glitter. Reclaiming it as a family day turned out to be the best thing I ever did with the fourteenth of February.
Drop the dinner reservation
The restaurant scene on Valentine's night is its own special punishment — prix-fixe menus, a ninety-minute wait, a server who'd rather be home. Skip it. A homemade heart-shaped pizza, which is really just a regular pizza you pinched into a vaguely cardiac shape, beats a stressful dinner out for a family with young kids. We make ours with a ball of dough from Trader Joe's, about $1.50, and the kids fight over who gets to arrange the pepperoni. It is genuinely more fun than any reservation I've sat through.
If you and your partner still want a grown-up moment, take it after bedtime. The day belongs to everyone.
Crafts that don't require a degree in crafting
I am not a craft person. I want that on the record. But the low-stakes Valentine's craft has become a small tradition because it asks almost nothing of me. A bag of Crayola markers, some red and pink paper from the Target dollar bins, a roll of washi tape, and a pile of doilies from the grocery store baking aisle, and you've got an afternoon.
What we actually make, year to year:
- Cards for grandparents, which the grandparents keep forever and which cost about nothing
- A "things I love about you" jar where everyone writes one slip for everyone else, and yes, the kids' entries are usually about food
- Painted rocks one year, because the internet told me to, and they were terrible, and we still have them
The jar is the one I'd push you toward if you only do one thing. My son once wrote that he loved me "because you make the good eggs," and I think about that on hard days.
Keep it cheap and keep it weird
There's a real temptation, fed by every store display since January 2nd, to spend money on this. Don't. The whole appeal of Valentine's-as-family-day is that it's low-budget and a little ridiculous. A box of conversation hearts nobody actually likes the taste of, a movie everyone's seen, the heart pizza slightly burned on one edge — that's the texture of a good one. The pressure that used to come with this day belonged to a version of my life that's over, and I don't miss it.