Leave it to COVID-19 to ruin another holiday. Take a look at this impressive hit list from the past year that the coronavirus pandemic has sucked the joy out of:
St. Patrick’s Day
Memorial Day
Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season
Summer Olympics
Fourth of July
Labor Day
Halloween
Thanksgiving
Christmas
New Year’s Eve
Super Bowl Sunday
And those are just the confirmed casualties. It doesn’t include birthdays, anniversaries and other family and work traditions millions of people usually enjoy. I don’t know when Arbor Day was in 2020, or what it actually is, but I’m going to guess that it wasn’t great in 2020.
Well, it looks like Valentine’s Day is going to take a KO punch from the pandemic too now. A study by TD Banks shows that 1 in 10 couples were furloughed, lost their job, or had their hours cut in the past year. Those factors are not what you would call “aphrodisiacs.” In fact, they are romance negators.
Date nights for most couples this past year were about as frequent as a Bill Belichick appearance at open mic night at the Boston Improv. If it’s not because money is tight, most restaurants in big cities you couldn’t even get a table. Because they weren’t open.
It’s not a going to be a great holiday for retailers either, as spending on Valentine’s Day gifts this year fell from a record of $196.31 in 2020, to $164.76 per person on average this year. That stat is courtesy of the National Retail Federation, whose job it is to make sense out of dollars.
40% of Americans said “screw Valentine’s Day,” and are skipping it altogether this year in order to save money. That stat comes from a survey done by LendingTree.
My suggestion is to ignore all of this sad news, and go out and make Valentine’s Day extra special this year. If you have someone to celebrate it with, that means you just made it through a heck of a rough year together and your relationship survived. You need a nice meal out, or some great takeout more than ever, and your favorite restaurants need and deserve your support too.
So if nobody else will say it this year, I will. Happy Valentine’s Day!
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