Valentine’s day, a time to celebrate love. In GHS we don’t take the holiday lightly. A faint memory of elementary Valentine’s day comes to mind, handing out candy to your whole class enjoying the festivities. This starts to vary as we get to the hustle and bustle of high school with many students wishing for the perfect guy or gal to ask them the ultimate question this time of year; “Will you be my Valentine?”

This may not be as well known but Valentine’s Day actually originated from one Saint Valentine. According to History.com Saint Valentine was around in approximately 3rd century Rome. At the time in Rome marriage of young men was being prohibited by Emperor Claudius II in order to gain better soldiers. However Saint Valentine would not settle for this and decided to help marry young couples in secret. This could not last forever though as Valentine was caught and imprisoned. But alas this only helped in furthering the holiday that we would know today as Valentine fell in love with a young woman during his time of imprisonment and allegedly wrote the first valentine. A tradition that would be furthered today by one of our very own clubs at GHS. 

 Project X Squared came up with the perfect idea to help out our students with this daunting task of sending a Valentine to their very own loved ones and all while helping spread back love to the community. Readers may have seen the group sitting in commons at their table selling roses to be delivered with notes on Valentine’s Day during 2nd period. Ruby McNeil helped with the charge. She also elaborated further that all the hard earned money would go towards raising money for the women’s shelter. As of the end of lunch February 13th the group had managed to sell 66 roses for a price of $3. 

However there was some curiosity on who these roses were really going to. Overall when asked about it McNeil said that a little over half of the roses were going to friends as opposed to partners. This correlated with information collected from a survey given to GHS Students. Out of the 17 asked 82% sayed things would be doing instead of engaging in romantic activities on Valentine’s day. Instead they would be having a ‘Galentine’s day’ catching up with school work, or as Alivia Haskell jokes “Throwing rocks at happy couples.” 

Overall it seems that our school is not filled with a romantic love but instead a platonic love and community love. While we may still have the time old idea of Valentine’s day being one to spend with your partner it seems like we fail to execute just in that way, we spread that love further from our friends and family even into the community.