Tuesday is, after all, Valentine’s Day, the day for love — and flowers, greeting playing cards, chocolate, jewellery, steak dinners and little sweet hearts with cute sayings.
It is estimated that Americans will spend $25.9 billion on Valentine’s Day this yr, up 8 % over final yr and one of many prime spending years on document.
A survey by the web site WalletHub discovered males will spend twice as a lot as ladies on V-Day, which reveals males have extra sense than we’re credited with.
Most of the cash can be spent on sweet, with 57% of these responding to a survey by the National Retail Federation planning to shell out for sweets. That is adopted by greeting playing cards (40%), flowers (37%) and a night out (32%).
But you may want to look intently at that heart-shaped field your sweetie palms you. According to one other examine performed by Wired Research, a majority of American adults age 21 and over are planning on both utilizing or giving their vital others some hashish this Valentine’s Day. That provides a complete new which means to the time period sugar excessive.
Some religions, like Hinduism, don’t rejoice Valentine’s Day. They say it goes in opposition to conventional Indian values.
So the Indian authorities got here up with one thing new for Feb. 14 this yr — “Cow hug day,” urging Indians to hug the animals the Hindu faith considers sacred, fairly than one another.
That didn’t final lengthy. Amid protests the government-run Animal Welfare Board of India stated the attraction to embrace a bovine fairly than your sweetie “stands withdrawn.”
Earlier final week the Animal Welfare Board stated “hugging cows will bring emotional richness and increase individual and collective happiness.” That stance apparently upset many individuals.
Cows couldn’t be reached for remark.
Locally, Valentine’s Day this yr falls on Election Day, a transparent dichotomy given the rancorous nature of politics lately.
Enid voters will go to the polls to choose a brand new mayor in addition to metropolis commissioners for wards 1 and a pair of.
One metropolis fee candidate is alleged to have ties to a bunch known as the American Identity Movement, which has been described by the Anti-Defamation League as “a white supremacist group focused on the preservation of ‘white American culture’ and promoting white European identity.”
OK, I’ve a query. Why?
What is so nice about white folks? I imply, I’m one, and I don’t really feel significantly superior to anyone. Just ask my bride.
What is it about pale folks from Northern Europe that makes them higher than anyone else?
Should we base how we view and deal with different folks on the quantity of melanin of their pores and skin?
It simply doesn’t make sense. Jesus, as an illustration, was not white. He couldn’t have been. In a 2018 guide titled “What Did Jesus Look Like,” Joan Taylor, professor of Christian origins at Kings College London, did in depth analysis and located that Christ almost certainly had brown eyes, hair that was darkish brown to black and olive-brown pores and skin.
Thus, not a white man. And he cherished everyone, and calls us to do the identical.
So why do some folks fear a lot about what people see after they gaze within the mirror of a morning? Do some folks really feel higher by telling themselves the accident of beginning that gave them no matter hue they sport in some way made them superior to these of different races?
There is a faculty of thought that claims every race has its personal traits, that are handed down from one technology to the subsequent. All members of stated race, it is stated, share the identical inherited traits. Said traits are supposed to decide not solely the race’s look, however its intelligence, creativity and energy. The races with the most effective traits, these folks stated, dominated different races.
So stated the philosophy of 1 Adolph Hitler and his Nazi followers, and the world had to go to warfare to do away with them.
I imply, white folks aren’t actually white anyway, and black folks aren’t actually black. White is an entire absence of coloration and black is all the colours current without delay.
I’ll never perceive why some persons are so consumed with proving that one race is superior to one other. It is unnecessary to me.
I favor to dwell by the philosophy espoused by a line from the music, “The Farmer and the Cowman,” from the musical “Oklahoma!” which says “I don’t say I’m no better than anybody else, but I’ll be damned if I ain’t just as good.”
Now be certain that your sweetie’s glad this Valentine’s Day, get out and vote, and hug a cow whereas you’re at it, why don’t you?
Mullin is an award-winning author and columnist who retired in 2017 after 41 years with the News and Eagle. Email him at [email protected] or write him in care of the Enid News & Eagle at PO Box 1192, Enid, OK, 73702.
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Mullin is an award-winning author and columnist who retired in 2017 after 41 years with the News & Eagle. Email him at [email protected] or write him in care of the Enid News & Eagle at PO Box 1192, Enid, OK, 73702.
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