Take a stroll in your nearest mall, turn on the T.V. or listen to your favorite radio station. You’ll likely see shimmering diamond advertisements and hear about sales on sexy lingerie for that special someone.

It’s that time of the year. Love must be in the air.

Or is it?

Today love comes with a price. Every year, lovers scour the malls in search of the perfect gift for their significant other, spending hard-earned paychecks on that certain thing that will make Valentine’s Day special.

I guess many are too intoxicated by love to notice what is really going on. Or maybe they are still recovering from the blow of Cupid’s arrow. We no longer understand why we celebrate this day.

Once again, we are allowing corporate conglomerates to rule our lives, giving us a false sense of desire to attain material possessions. And we call this a free country? A holiday that was once meant to celebrate one’s love for another has turned into a dire search to find the perfect candy, cheap-but-expensive-looking jewelry, the most sincere pre-packaged sentiment on a card. Just another commercialized holiday.

Not only is Valentine’s Day in part created by Hallmark, which profits from naive buyers, and in turn ruins forests by the quantity of paper it uses to churn out saccharine-sweet blather, but we are also adding to global slave labor by buying some of the products marketed specifically for Valentine’s Day.

Two years ago, Valentine’s Day became a launch pad for the Chocolate Campaign to eliminate child slave labor in the Ivory Coast cocoa industry. The non-profit organization, Global Exchange, protested chocolate manufacturers M&M/Mars, Hershey’s and See’s Candies, whose revenues soar during February, demanding they buy Fair Trade chocolate.

It seems that Americans have bought into this romantic day of gimmicks. Last year an approximate 130 million roses were sold for Valentine’s Day alone. During the month of February last year, jewelry stores sold $2.1 billion in merchandise.

For those who are in love, Valentine’s Day is a time to dig into the pocketbook. Bad timing- another big day is coming up: Tax Day. The monthly payment for those now-forgotten heart-shaped Valentine’s rubies does not look pretty now that Uncle Sam is demanding your money.

Because society puts so much emphasis on this loving, gift-giving day, for singles it can all be quite depressing. The international crisis counseling organization, Samaritans, reports that it receives more calls on Valentine’s Day than any other day except Christmas. For lonely hearts everywhere, Feb. 14 is Singles Awareness Day.

So, what is the point? Maybe instead of obsessing about what we should buy for him or her, or worrying about whether or not we will have a date on this over-hyped day, we should let our friends and family know how much we care about them. We often take our day-to-day lives for granted, and those whom we really do care about often never know that they are important to us.

We may be going to war soon, and if we do, that Vermont Teddy Bear will seem so insignificant. There’s a lesson here. One cannot truly buy another’s love.

Love is a powerful force, capable of grounding a lost soul or giving light to an empty existence. Love doesn’t have a price and should not be trivialized by corporate ad campaigns.

This Valentine’s Day, be unique. Don’t go broke trying to prove your love. Instead of buying things, spend time. Time with family. Time with friends. Or even a little time pampering yourself. For those in a relationship, memories that you make with one another will last so much longer than anything manufactured.

And if you’re solo right now, don’t dread Valentine’s Day. There’s a lot to be said for not being tied down. You made this choice. Enjoy your freedom.