Planning a Perfect PALentine's Day

We hate to sound cliché, but Valentine’s Day is annoying. We're totally down with showing love and affection, and giving loved ones little trinkets, but the day itself is so overrated.

We think if you love someone, you don’t need a special day to show it, or to flaunt it with flowers or an elaborate date. It’s like that couple in your class that posts “I LOVE U” / “Ur so cuteeeeee” on each other’s Facebook walls. If you actually cared, maybe you’d text instead of broadcasting it. Or you know, talk to each other in person. Something about it feels manufactured.

Still, when everyone around you is celebrating their stupid little relationships (no hard feelings, friends), it’s nice to have a distraction and a way to celebrate all the other love in your life. Hence, we introduce PALentine’s Day.

Palentine: pal-uhn-tahyn
Noun
1. a card or message to a friend, sentimental but sometimes satirical or comical, or a token or gift sent by one friend to another on Valentine’s Day.
2. a best or new friend, chosen or greeted on this day.

Like Valentine’s Day, Palentine’s Day is a creation that’s all about celebrating love. Instead of romantic love, Palentine’s Day is a day to celebrate friends. So, here are some ideas to get you Sparklers started.

Send Some Palentine’s Day Cards

- Write Palentine’s Day cards to your best friends. Cut out some funny pictures from magazines, write in some inside jokes, and genuinely tell your best friends how you feel about them. Great things to tell your friends are things you’d like to hear or be appreciated for — like “thanks for making fun of our creepy biology teacher with me” or “thanks for listening to me whine about why that hot guy doesn’t notice me even though I’ve never spoken to him.”

- Write Palentine’s Day cards to people that have done great things for you this year. Last year, my study group for a really difficult class lent me notes for a class I totally didn’t understand. I wanted to let them know that I didn’t take it for granted, and really appreciated everyone spending extra time with me. I wrote each member of my group a nice, handwritten card letting them know I was grateful. It’s old-fashioned, but it’s really nice to receive something like that.

- Write Palentine’s Day cards to new friends. That funny girl you got paired with in math class? She’s pretty cool, and you seem to have some things in common. This can be tricky, but you can write her a short-and-sweet-and-not-creepy little note and say you’d like to hang out sometime outside math class, and leave your phone number to text. If she doesn’t wanna hang, no big deal. But if she does, you might have just made a new friend. It’s always nice to have a fresh perspective from outside your clique.

Other Great P-Day Activities

- Movie night with friends. It can be a girls’ night, or a coed thing—just invite a bunch of people over to watch horror movies, eat half-price Valentine’s Day candy (usually goes on sale on Valentine’s Day), and just hang out.

- Clothing swap! Round up things that don’t fit, don’t look good, or are just plain questionable and trade with your friends. You can trade permanently or for a set amount of time. You get to make some room in your closet and refresh your wardrobe. And you get to make fun of your friend for buying those hideous drop-crotch harem pants.

-  Cook dinner or bake something with a few pals. Is loading the dishwasher the only quality time you spend in the kitchen? That doesn’t mean you can’t figure out how to make something delicious! Check out Pinterest or your mom’s recipe book for ideas. Even if it turns out awful, it will be fun to try something new with a couple of friends.

- Get active.  Spring is just around the corner (unless you’re in the Midwest like me). Dust off your running shoes and make a pact to run with a friend two or three times per week. If it’s still too snowy where you live, make a workout video buddy for after-school workouts in the comfort of your home. YouTube, Hulu, and lots of other sources have tutorials.

- Start a book club. All of you Sparklers are here because you like reading and writing, right? Why don’t you get some of your friends involved, too? Pick a fun, easy-to-read book that doesn’t feel like homework, and discuss it with friends. It sounds like something your mom would do, but it’s really fun to hear your friends’ different reactions. I read the entire Gossip Girl series one year along with one of my friends. It was fun to talk about the characters, what’s different from the show, and which parts were totally stupid/awesome.

- Volunteer! There are so many ways to get involved in your community, and it’s even more fun to do with friends.  ou can volunteer at an animal shelter, start a food drive at school, or even just spend a few hours babysitting for your nice neighbors so they can go out for the evening. Or check out Teens for Jeans, which we wrote about last week. You’ll feel good about yourself, and you’ll help someone out.

- Write a letter to yourself.  Trust us on this one. It sounds lame, but think about what you want out of the next year, or the highlights and lowlights of this year. Seal it and stick it in your desk for a year (or two), and have fun reading it later. Or, you and a friend can write letters to each other to read in a year.

What are you going to do to celebrate Palentine’s Day?