{"id":681,"date":"2018-02-12T00:52:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T00:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5379.temp.domains\/~pjmaclay\/valentines-day-openbook-blog-hop-2\/"},"modified":"2019-03-26T02:27:33","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T02:27:33","slug":"valentines-day-openbook-blog-hop-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/?p=681","title":{"rendered":"Valentine’s Day #OpenBook Blog Hop"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nI freely admit it. I wasn’t one of the ‘popular’ kids in school. If there hadn’t been a rule about giving every kid in the class a Valentine card, I would have received very few. As it was, I didn’t get any of the really cool ones some of the other kids got. No, I got the generic, run of the mill cards that were left after the ‘best’ ones were picked for someone else. Heck, there were times I didn’t even any of the candy hearts.<\/div>\n
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\nSo I’ve never been a big fan of Valentine’s Day.<\/div>\n
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\nBut that’s not the biggest reason I’m still not a fan of the holiday. (Does it count as a holiday if you don’t get the day off work?) No, what bothers me is how contrived the whole thing is.<\/p>\n

Evidence points to several different historical figures that could have been the basis for today’s celebration. Perhaps it was a combination of legends of all three. Why there is a Roman Catholic (and several other Christian denominations) saint for romance is beyond me. Does it really take divine intervention for a relationship to work? And how does that translate into a day when we are all encouraged to spend money just to show that we care about someone. Shouldn’t we be doing that every day we are with them? (Not<\/i> the spend money part, the show we care part.)<\/p>\n

After all, that’s part of what makes a relationship work\u2014taking time to let the other person know that you care. Doing things that don’t cost anything, like listening when they talk.Watching a TV show with them. Giving them a hug before you leave for work. It doesn’t take a saint to tell you these things make an impression.<\/p>\n

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\nI don’t expect flowers or candy for Valentine’s Day. If I get a nice card I’ll be happy. An extra kiss or two will be great. A heartfelt “I love you” is always nice to hear.<\/p>\n

And then there’s the important question\u2014if the day is supposed to be about romance, how comes we are ‘training’ our kids to take part? Kids as young as three or four are making cards for their parents. Why? Just why? (Besides the obvious\u2014get them to spend money.)<\/p>\n

So I’m not going to wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day. I will thank you for taking the time to read my blog and (hopefully) my books. And may February 14th and every day be happy.<\/p>\n

Now let’s  hop on over and see what the other authors have to say.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Feb. 12, 2018 \u2013 Valentine\u2019s is this week. Chat about the most irritating thing about this event.<\/p>\n

Rules:
\n1. Link your blog to this hop.
\n2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
\n3. Promise to visit\/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
\n4. Tweet\/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
\n5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.<\/p>\n

WordPress:<\/p>\n

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\nCustom Blog:<\/p>\n

\nAn InLinkz Link-up<\/a><\/div>\n

\nAn InLinkz Link-up<\/p>\n

get the InLinkz code<\/a><\/p>\n

\nInLinkz | view linkup<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I freely admit it. I wasn’t one of the ‘popular’ kids in school. If there hadn’t been a rule about giving every kid in the class a Valentine card, I would have received very few. As it was, I didn’t get any of the really cool ones some of the… Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paJdTo-aZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1969,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions\/1969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}