Because you couldn’t be more aware of how single you are on any other day of the year, Valentine’s Day is recognized for its discrimination against the romantically challenged. Finally, an alternative has been developed: Singles’ Awareness Day (notice the oh-so-clever acronym there).

Personally, I don’t know what is more sad, the fact that I am single on Valentine’s Day or that I’d be celebrating a holiday with the word “awareness” in its title, making singleness sound like a tragic disease.

While this new alternative is not official and remains more of a joke than anything, it has traditions that celebrate singleness. While Valentine’s Day is about flowers, cards, chocolates and dates, SAD is about single events, traveling (an activity encouraged to be done whilst single), treating oneself, eating chocolate by oneself (which, depending on how you look at it, may fit under the treating oneself category) and spending time with friends.

SAD goes so far as to have its official color, green, opposite the color wheel of red, claimed by Valentine’s Day.

Cherry Bomb Comedy’s public service announcement for SAD explains all the benefits of celebrating the holiday. It’s the day of the year that singles get to do “whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want.” For guys, you can eat Froot Loops for dinner, play Call Of Duty until 4 a.m. and sleep until noon. For ladies, there’ll be no painful visits to the spa to get a bikini wax, and you can go out for girls’ night. The PSA mainly addresses those who are hitched, making being single as enticing as they possibly can: “On Valentine’s Day, you wish you were us.” How could we not want to be single when “studies show that couples gain weight after getting serious?”

Yes, there are nice ideas of being single. Guys won’t have to Google how to write a love note or battle for the last bouquet of roses. Girls won’t have to shave their legs, struggle into the old Spanx and get dressed up. These are all things to remind your single self on Feb. 14, when every couple is making an extra effort to love each other.

It’s quite odd when you really consider the fact that a holiday is made to celebrate loving someone… Shouldn’t that be an every-day-of-the-year thing? Yet, it’s forced on one random day in February. One simple slip in the form of a forgotten reservation or the wrong flowers and the entire day takes a relationship through a loop. There’s just too much pressure packed into one 24-hour period. I might even argue that Valentine’s is more stressful than the holidays.

SAD is supposed to be less stressful, but it turns out to be just the opposite. If you plan on going out that night to take yourself on a date, the reservations still have to be made early, and every place is going to be just as crowded. The movie theaters are going to be packed, too. A night in just isn’t fun. So there’s just no winning, Valentine’s Day and SAD are equally disappointing.

There is no holiday that will make being single on Valentine’s Day more pleasant. How can we have a holiday only for couples? Why can’t it be all-inclusive?

Dean Obeidallah, an American comedian, suggests that we celebrate Valentine’s Day on Feb. 29, “so that we are only compelled to observe it once every four years.”

Let’s face it, Valentine’s Day doesn’t really happen until Feb. 15 when the chocolate goes on sale anyways.

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