Valentines Day & Polish men

Quite. Easter has been celebrated long before Christianity was ever thought up and all traditions have to start somewhere. People like St. Valentine's Day (Halloween too) and no reason at all to avoid them simply because they're growing in popularity rather than waning.

Simply because they're yet another tacky, tawdry pop-culture gimmick designed to down-dumb the gullible and drain their pockets rather than broadening their intellectual horizons and enriching their life with genuine cultural values.

In what way is a festival, one older by the way than Poland itself, a "pop culture gimmick". Certainly a very long lasting "gimmick"


So people shouldn't have fun?

So wallowing in tawdry, tacky, tasteless, plastic kitsch is fun? If so, it only shows how the movers and shakers of commerpop have downdumbed their victims and turned them into hapless. docile consumers of garbage.

Do you imagine that everybody (or even most people) of the many millions round the world who celebrate Saint Valentine's Day "wallow" in anything?


The masses always need an opiate. It used to be religion but that's been going out of fashion a for some time now. Still no need to "wallow" in anything, especially not your "plastic kitsch" - there are much nicer ways to celebrate Saint Valentine's Day. And he in Poland, people like Saint Valentine"s Day.

Google the old tradition of "Cockle Bread" - that would be nice to introduce to Poland and fun for the bakers to help the fair damsels mould the roll....

Valentine's Day is most certainly a gimmick and a heavily commercialized one at that. The only real beneficiaries are florists and restaurants. Oh, and don't forget the media too which loves to churn out articles about how men (of course) failed to read privileged women's minds and thus didn't successfully navigate the minefield of expectations laid out for them. Flowers? So sexist and very likely involving modern day slavery to produce and deliver to the market; damaging to the environment too anyway. Chocolates? Fattening or even a potential life ending health hazard for those with nut allergies. Dinner out at town? Wrong one or not the right table. Shouldn't strong, independent, modern women be paying the bill or at least splitting it? Jewelry perhaps then? Wrong again. Strong, independent, modern women can buy their own thank you very much.

So why bother with this mess? Genuine love is personal and spontaneous and doesn't need a wallet emptying and potentially emotionally crushing day set aside to collectively express it.

Spoken as only someone who is single possibly could.


Who "collectively expresses" anything?

Just a nice day to take one's beloved somewhere nice and very very popular in Poland.

Not at all.


Like I said genuine love doesn't need a date on the calendar in order to keep florists and restaurants in the black.


Spare us. Valentine's Day is indeed trotted out as a way to celebrate heterosexual monogamy. But you know full well that it is not uncommon to find homosexuals working careers arranging flowers and serving food. So who really benefits from this commercialized gimmick?

And winter "doesn't need" a festival with turkey and robins but we all like Christmas. Summer "doesn't need" a vacation, January "doesn't need" Burns Night, Spring "doesn't need" an Easter - people still choose to enjoy special occasions.


Not only - in fact not at all by a long chalk. It's for anyone who is in love and who is loved. edited


Spoken as only an unhappily single young person could.

Seasonal celebrations in Poland are timeless and certainly predate the arrival of Christianity in 966. They have their own names and traditions.

Valentine's Day like your "Burns Night" is not native to Poland and so simply slapping it on the calendar in the hope of commercial success is not a good enough reason for Poles to have to put up with it.


It's not advertised that way because advertisers know that most humans are heterosexual and they are not interested in being lumped in with sexual minorities. No one ever made money by ******* off the average consumer.


You couldn't answer the question. That's OK. It's hard for some people to own up to the truth.

Yes, and now commerpop is the opium of the people. Best way to keep them downdumbed into docile consumers. They are told 24/7 what is cool, trendy, in, with it, cutting edge, top shelf and great fun and a great many of them actually believe the brain-corroding garbage is worth pursing and paying through the nose for. It's all about $$$ €€€ zł zł zł £££ for the shakers and movers and worthless tripe for the suckers,!

Nor are you for that matter, however the fact that a tradition originated elsewhere is not any reason at all to reject it. Dzień Kobiet is an example of an imported festival that is enthusiastically celebrated in Poland. Like Valentine's Day.


Who has been "simply slapping" anything "on the calendar"?


The millions of Poles who celebrated Valentine's Day this year looked like they "put up with it" very very happily indeed.


Don't worry - one day you'll find your Valentine. Though evidently not this year...

For those not in the know. That day is the nameday of St. Valentine.
True, commercialism has taken over, but the same thing happened on the Birthday of Jesus Christ or on the nameday of St. Sylvester.
Welcome to capitalism, where every day will be a celebration of something - as long as we can sell you our products.
I am waiting for 'Single woman' and 'Single man' day, 'Cat's day, 'Dog's day'.....the day I found my one true love (let's make that 20th May)...

One can also say that commie Mayday parades were "enthusiastically celebrated" by millions fo Poles. They marched, held up banners and placards saying "Poland's youth is with the Party and "With volunteer work we will honour the PZPR's 7th Congress", brandished flowers, chatted and smiled and waved to Gomułka or Gierek on the reviewing stand. Besides, after the march there was usually free entertainment and a kind of fair where one could feast on grilled kiełbasa and buy such hard-to-get- luxury items and loo paper and light bulbs.

Why the hell did they ever dump communism when it offered them so much fun and so many benefits?!

It seems to me that in Poland stores have started to "put a lid" on all the commercial celebrations compared to a few years ago. Stores used to be more "agressive". Yesterday morning, I was at Reduta Shopping Mall (Warsaw for those from elsewhere) and I did not notice any big deal re Valentine. Now, things such as Halloween or Saint-Patrick's Day are more discrete in Polish stores.

Basically at least once a month there is something: grandfathers, grandmothers, lovers, women, men (March 9), secretaries, teachers, mothers, fathers, etc etc ..... I personally believe that we don't need a special day to celebrate or to love someone but what I hate about all this is the agressive brainwashing from business. In brief, if you don't buy a gift to your secretary, your grandfather, your teacher, your dog or your snake on THE VERY day they tell you to, there is something wrong with you. I do not like pressure and do not like to be among the sheep. I do not need special occasions to receive and to offer gifts.

PS: as to "Women's day", it cracks me up! Instead of giving women the same rights (for instance equal salaries) and basic feminine rights (contraception, abortion..), men get away with "flowers". Pure BS!

Genuine spirituality is personal and spontaneous and doesn't need a money-collecting institution telling people what to eat or how to live or who to love or a day set aside to collectively express it (or any building whatsoever).

I fail to see your point.

If mindless consumers didn't have VDay they'd find another thing to be silly about and spend money on. It's easier to ignore it rather than rant about it.

@Mafektis, that's a very good point.

Anyway, restaurants struggle enough at this time of year with waiters laid off and a quiet time for restaurant suppliers too so no bad thing at all to have a celebration that involves going out and spending some money on a nice meal to lighten up an already miserable month.

They most certainly do. One chef I know who runs a very successful place told me that Valentine's day is basically "the difference between paying the rent this month and not paying the rent".


Always had you down as more of a Yugo guy.

It is sad that all Slavs honor Valentines Day while failed to honor some of old Slavic deities. Sure, Serbians are kind of exception here with their celebration of family Slava custom and Vidovdan (day of Svetovid).

Doesn't surprise me as I always had you down as a bicycle guy ever since I stole your laundry soap off your bicycle when you went inside the store.


Oh Honey, come on now, "Women are equal to men, until it comes time to pay."
She gets his paycheck, she gets the house, she gets child support, she gets alimony, she has government welfare on her side, she has the law on her side, she has the courts on her side none of which a man is afforded.

That is why they created Valentine's Day, so the Alfa males can charm the pants off a woman respectfully. A win win.

Here in Poland we celebrate what we want to celebrate; a blend of the old and the new, what matters to us. And people just don't give a four x about slavic 'deities'.


Wouldn't you say that one of the prerequisites of being an alpha male is the ability to spell the word 'alpha'?

Thanks Harold, I don't know what I would do without you.
I least I am one.
ALPHA it is from now on.
Don't you wish you were one.

have just been chatting with my lodger about valentines day. i asked him if he was going to be buying e.g flowers or maybe chocolates for his girlfriend who stays over occasionally. he looked totally surprised and said no.is he just unromantic

Maybe he is not used to it, it is not so old tradition for Polish people.

Men should buy women flowers on Valentines though.

don't forget that 'Valentines Day' is a 'Western' commercial marketing construct designed to sell more stuff.
men should buy women flowers every day! women should buy men flowers every day!

To attract more and more customers many shopkeepers decorate their shops on such special occasion.

America has done Europe one better. To rake in the dough during the autumn off-season before Halloween, the Yanks long ago invented Sweetest Day (in October I think) to give sweethearts chocolates and flowers. I haven't seen any sign of that in Poland so far, but who knows? Co Jankes wymyśli, Polka polubi!

The term Yank to refer to Americans is deeply offensive to those of us who are not Yankees.

Happy Valentines Day to all my girlfriends here.
with love, J.R. 😍

It's Ash Wednesday as well. All the avowed communists (especially the feminist womyn) haven't responded to you yet because they are in church.

I will celebrate black, Hispanic, faggot, NY rats, women's, and other such days, weeks, and months when they celebrate white hetero men.

After all, everything worth having that is not a baby was discovered, invented, constructed, or made possible by white toxic masculinity that instead of doing dishes decided to discover, invent, and construct at considerable risk to their money, health, and life while being told by the wives that it won't work and that they should spend more time changing diapers and playing with kids.

Luckily, they didn't listen...