No love lost for Valentine's Day

Believe what you want about today's Valentine's Day being rotten to it's sugary core by candy, greeting card companies and the patriarchy, but in Indonesia the words "Happy Valentine's Day" incite more than the general aversion.

I am, of course, only in touch with a small percent of Muslims in a specific environment. When I've talked with students and teachers at my school they say to me politely, "Miss we just don't celebrate Valentine's Day..." Their Facebook posts were, however, a bit more reflective of what I've read on the internet. Saturday morning my Facebook news wall was a range of differing opinions, all the way from:

And 

To

I also saw in my news feed pictures of other volunteers making hearts and cards with their students, so certainly not everyone in Indonesia is anti-Valentine's Day, or, at least they're more interested in cultural exchange with a foreigner. Regardless, I was taken aback by the reaction at my site.

I was curious as to why some religions hate a day that's supposed to be about honoring and adoring the people you love in a special way for a day. At least I have never read past the cheesiness that is Valentine's Day in our modern capitalist society.

It was not news to me that many countries don't celebrate Valentine's Day, but I didn't know that this was because they think it is sinful and morally corrupt.

According to a story in the Jakarta Post today, "Regional governments and the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) have banned the celebration of Valentine's Day on Feb. 14, 2015, citing its potentially harmful effects on the morals of young persons."

And from another website: "Last year, the Malaysian Islamic Development Department issued a sermon on Valentine’s Day, calling the holiday a kind of “colonization of the mind” that gives rise to a “mental disorder caused by alcohol, abortion and baby-dumping.""

 Indonesian clerics have reportedly taken particular offense to stores that sell bags of chocolates with condoms this year. They fear that Valentine's Day encourages promiscuity and having babies out of wedlock. In several other articles, sources quoted statistics from millennial websites on the rising number of babies born out of wedlock and the number of rushed teen marriages with babies not quite 9 months behind. My counterpart told me that the main problem seen here is that this holiday is encourages free (pre-marital) sex.

I've never taken holidays too literally - I just like an excuse to celebrate. I think holidays are symbols that create an orgy of good will for most of the population. While this view probably lessens my empathy towards religious associations with holidays, I can still understand the fear of holding up the conventions of marriage in a glossy landscape of advertisements that throws sex at us as if the world were ending and we all have to reproduce ASAP.

Let me emphasize that my students are most definitely not against romance. They are the sappiest when it comes to relationships and romance any other day of the year. They love Justin Bieber, Celine Dion and that chick who sings the twilight song about being together forever with a passion unparalleled by anyone I've seen over the age of 15. They ask for daily updates on my boyfriend status and finding and marrying your "true love" is the greatest wish they could have for anyone. 

Valentine's Day, although not one of my most highly-prioritized holidays, has always been about the friends, family and chocolate in years past. I think if you want to make it about lopsided expectations (boyfriends have to buy flowers) or sex or even promiscuous (again, here that means pre-marital) sex then it's your right to use any occasion as your platform. This has been the most interesting Valentine's Day for me by far and I'm happy to learn about another side of the coin. Even if we weren't allowed to hold our Valentine's Day-themed English club and I received several pointed looks when our student council, OSIS, announced a meeting to discuss the dangers of Valentine's Day, I felt ok that I didn't exchange cultural perspectives. Sometimes you just gotta let be be.