The Tribune

By DIANE PHILLIPS

SUPER Bowl Sunday was enough excitement for the week so when Valentine’s Day rolled around 48 hours later, some of us just weren’t quite ready for another celebratory occasion, though there’s little doubt that restaurants were full, jewellery was flying off the shelf and you couldn’t find a red rose in town unless you spray painted it.

For many, this was the week of consumption collision. Stats were stunning. Americans made their way through 100 million pounds of chicken wings on Sunday. Really? They downed 325 million gallons of beer. And that’s without the game going into overtime. If they were lucky enough to be at the stadium watching – and consuming – in person they shelled out $17.50 for a 25-ounce can of Bud Light that sells for $3.50 down the road.

With a 30-second ad slot going for a cool $7m, host network Fox raked in revenue at the same rate as last year’s host, NBC, did for the single hottest day in sports. Figures differ widely as to what the Super Bowl nets, ranging from $130m to more than $600m and that’s not counting private betting.

Despite the hoopla and hollering, here’s the surprising part. Super Bowl Sunday spend doesn’t hold a candle to what we spend on Valentine’s Day. Consider the $2.5bn dropped on chocolate alone in 2022, including 58 million pounds in 36 million of those heart-shaped boxes, according to the National Confectioners’ Association. That’s just the start. With the $4bn-plus dished out to dine out, $5.86bn for jewellery, plus all the moola for soppy cards and clothes and trinkets and more, Valentine’s Day pumps $27bn into the US economy. And the latest trend? Increasing the spend by buying Valentine’s Day gifts for pets.

There’s no question – Hallmark holidays are hot. They drum up business, bump up and pump up economies. But what do they do for our psyche? If you really don’t like Halloween or you find yourself alone on Valentine’s Day, or you lost your dad recently and the hole in your heart hurts even more when Father’s Day rolls around, what is the price we pay for the day when we are supposed to celebrate and all we want to do is jerk the calendar page ahead to the next day.

Let’s be honest and face the price we pay when we are on the outside of a Hallmark holiday, when we know those around us have a reason to celebrate and we don’t, or we feel guilty for not feeling like celebrating. Hallmark holidays exact a toll on our soul, a high or low that is, at its root, artificial – a day marked on a calendar designed in part to make us feel appreciation for something, anything, but really created to drive commerce. Hallmark holidays are just plain good for business.

And that is why we have mixed feelings about them.

Something deep down inside where our real feelings reside tells us Hallmark holidays are not real. They are not like Christmas or Chanukkah or Kwanzaa or Easter or Passover where we are marking what we believe are moments that changed history and we commit ourselves to honour them by being better, doing better, helping more, stretching ourselves. They are not like watching Simone Biles knowing that while what she is doing doesn’t seem physically or humanly possible, it is the real thing. No one made it up. It’s not like National Pizza Day or Belly Laugh Day which, by the way, was January 24th of this year, in case you missed it. Shouldn’t we find a reason to laugh every day?

I feel like Scrooge talking about trumped up reasons to celebrate but if you substitute the phrase “spend money” for the word celebrate, you’ll get it. These holidays are important, they are important for economies. They just don’t do for us what a Super Bowl Sunday or a US Open does where we are watching the real thing, the best of the best giving their best whether football or tennis or some other sport. They make us behave a certain way because that is the way we are expected to act on that day, to buy a card, or flowers, or jewellery, to make us go out to dinner when we would love nothing better than to get into sweats and watch a movie on Netflix.

Still, they’re not bad. Just artificial. That said, Mother’s Day is less than three months away. Mark your calendar, May 14. Mothers are definitely worth celebrating and the holiday was a $31.7bn injection into the American economy last year (wish we had local figures), all the more reason to raise a glass, make a reservation and get ready to shower her with love. Just like we should every day.

TRANSITION HOUSING SOLUTION – CONVERTED SHIPPING CONTAINERS

AS HAITI’S political crisis worsens, and more flee the country to find safety and refuge in other places, including The Bahamas, and while the courts have cleared the way for the demolition of shanty towns, the need for temporary or transition housing increases.

In many places, converted shipping containers are being used. Would they serve the purpose here? A new 20-foot container runs less than $2,500 and shipping companies have used ones for sale for less. Conversion with windows, bathroom, cooking facility and sleeping arrangement can be completed for a surprisingly small sum if done in bulk. Power can be supplied by solar panels on container roofs.

Converted containers are increasingly in demand elsewhere for temporary housing after weather events or other natural disasters that cause widespread displacement.

This is not commentary on the rights or wrongs of shanty towns, except to urge a door-by-door assessment and a show of humanity towards all. This is only intended as a partial, possible temporary solution to what could become a vast homelessness problem that would only result in more of what the administration wishes to clear.