Happy Valentine's Day.

By the time you hear this, you may be getting ready to celebrate or fondly remembering having just done so.

Or maybe you're one of those people who doesn't care for Valentine's Day at all,

which would put you in the minority, according to a survey that came out earlier this year.

It found that 81% of Americans genuinely get excited about Valentine's Day even more so than Christmas.

I was surprised to hear that, and as you might imagine, I definitely get more excited about Christmas,

and I'll bet you do too. But it is true that more and more people see Valentine's Day and its close cousin

Galentine's Day as a day for celebrating not just romantic love, but all kinds of love.

59% of the people from that survey said that they planned to celebrate with their friends.

28% said they plan to celebrate with their pets.

I'll link to that survey in the show notes and over at Christmaspass.media so you can check it out for yourself. Well, whichever holiday

you get more excited about, there's no denying that there is a connection between Christmas

and Valentine's Day. And I'm not just talking about that somewhat recent trend of decorating

a Valentine's Day tree. Look no farther than Instagram and Pinterest to see that that is indeed

very much a thing. But mainly I'm thinking about the connection we've made between Christmas and romance.

The majority of modern Christmas novels and movies, especially those made-for-TV movies,

are about a new romance that blossoms during the Christmas season.

And that's interesting in its own right.

A quick Google search revealed that activity on dating apps like Tinder tends to be at its lowest

during the Christmas season, which we can reasonably assume that also means that dating

in general slows down around then. Which makes sense. Everyone's so busy listening to Christmas

past. Apparently, dating is the most active in January, January 5th to be exact, which has earned

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