The Price of Love: How Capitalism Took Over Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day—the beloved holiday filled with red hearts, Cupids, teddy bears, and the iconic conversation candy hearts. A day of romance to honor and show your love for your partner by gifting them a hand-written card, a bouquet of roses, and chocolates in a heart-shaped box. Nowadays, it has expanded to commemorating platonic relationships like family, friendships, and even pets. What’s not to love about Valentine’s Day? It’s just the holiday of love, right?

In this modern era, Valentine’s Day has become a commercialized holiday that values performative gift-giving over actually celebrating one’s love for their partner. According to the National Retail Federation, Valentine’s Day spending in 2026 will reach a record high of $29.1 billion. To understand how colossal this number is, if you were to save $100 per day, it would take you 27,397 years to reach $1 billion, and 794,513 years to reach $29 billion. That’s more than double the time modern humans (Homo sapiens) have existed.

So, how has a holiday rooted in care and love turned into a capitalist industry? Recently, there has been a cultural shift toward the belief that buying more gifts or more expensive gifts (kudos if it’s both) equates to how much you love someone. This shift has only been exemplified by social media, where content creators promote overconsumption, buying many pricey gifts because it generates views. This sets unrealistic expectations because the content is performative for the viewers, rather than actually showing care for the creator’s partner. These standards are harmful, increasing gifting pressure, and causing normal people to believe they must spend exorbitant amounts of money—amounts most cannot afford—to prove their love to their partner.

However, this pressure not only hurts wallets but also the environment. Valentine’s commercialization has increased overconsumption tenfold. Stores stock their shelves with cheap, mass-produced love-themed items that are hyperspecific to the holiday. People purchase these products for one occasion, then leave them in their house forgotten until they are thrown into a landfill. This overconsumption increases carbon footprint and pollutes the world since the cheaply-created products break easily.

And while some people argue that overconsumption spending benefits the economy, in reality, when companies overproduce for the newest fad, products go to waste once the hype is over. This causes companies to lose money while polluting the world.

Now, this article is not to say that Valentine’s Day is a bad holiday. Rather, it implores society to think critically about its consumption and not fall for the capitalism that has become Valentine’s Day gift-giving. You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on a gift to show your love for your partner. You can hand make your gift, thrift something, then upcycle it, or just spend quality time with your partner this Valentine’s Day. Make dinner together and watch a movie, go for a walk, or just enjoy each other’s presence. Taking time to be with your loved ones or going through the effort of making a gift is exponentially more meaningful than buying a box of chocolates.

In the end, just remember that Valentine’s Day is meant to be a celebration of love—and love isn’t measured by the price of your gift, but rather the time and care you show your partner.