Between April 6-11, I am playing Theseus in Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream". The play is set in spring, but there is a fun line about Valentine's Day:
Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past:
Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?
which I read as saying, "Okay the wooing is done; the only thing left for young folks is to 'couple'."
Interestingly, lots of people wooing or already wooed seem to spend LOTS of money at Valentine's Day. From WaPo,
My husband and I have what I think is a romantic routine for celebrating Valentine’s Day.
On Valentine’s Day morning, I’ll turn to him and say, “Honey, do you love me?”
To which he replies, “Sure, I love you.”
“Great,” I say to him. “We just saved about $8 because we don’t have to buy any greeting cards for each other.”
We laugh and go about our day. We don’t need stuff to show our love. I don’t expect flowers (they die). I love chocolate, but neither of us wants any since we are both trying to lose weight. It’s too crowded at restaurants. ...
The average person will spend $142.31 on candy, flowers, apparel and more this Valentine’s Day, up from $133.91 last year, according to the National Retail Federation. The group says total spending is expected to reach $18.9 billion.
Really? That's the average? Not us. We love to eat out, so we do dine out for Valentine's Day (and many other special occasions, such as "Would-you-like-to-go-out-to-eat? Day").
This year, though, we're going out for lunch on Friday rather than buck the crowds on Saturday. And lunch is almost always less expensive than dinner.
But $142 [US! These days that's the equivalent of, what? $7000 Cdn???]! We try to keep flowers or flowering plants around most of the time, so we make no big, special expenditure there for Valentine's Day. And if we have any chocolate for Valentine's Day, it will likely be purchased on sale after Valentine's Day.