Candy Grams on Valentines Day 2005 [series]

 My annual anti-Valentine’s day is going to be similar, but adjacent to my first post, way back from 2007. It’s been 18 years since I was that 23 year old college senior, generally annoyed by the heterosexist performative displays and my perspective has shifted a bit. I am still just as annoyed with Valentine’s Day and everything that comes with that loaded holiday, but instead of identifying more with the children, I see it through the eyes of an adult. I’m not a parent, but I have a lot of empathy for what being left out of gift-receiving does to children, teens, and young people (not to mention all the negative lessons and stereotypes they’re learning from the holiday). My post today talks about the unintended harms caused by candy grams.

I perused the internet for facts about the little fundraising gifts, and didn’t find much in the way of statistics or research. What I did find was a whole lot of people of all ages still traumatized by candy gram delivery day. I gathered quotes from comment sections and forums to illustrate the point that the NOT receiving of a gift, the feeling left out, negatively impacts the psyche across demographics. I collated those responses to current crises and memories of not getting a candy gram, or getting only one from a parent or teacher, or getting one from someone creepy.

Then I looked up social exclusion, and how humans are evolutionarily wired to want to belong to the group. I went on to find research about how social hierarchies are created and maintained, and what happens to individuals who are left out or even bullied. Then I looked for symptoms of social exclusion, including loneliness and possible solutions to all of it. This research has been gathered in its original form with sources at the bottom of this post. It would be plagiarism-city for a school assignment, but I’m intending just to share the information I found, not take credit for it.

I learned a lot, and I hope you can take something away from this series as well. My main takeaway is we don’t need to perpetuate the candy gram fundraising or anything else that makes people feel less than. But also, we need to emotionally and socially prepare children for that time when they are inevitably made to feel forgotten or ostracized.