Valentines Day suggestions

While driving to a church that had asked me to fill in Sunday, I passed a Valentine's Day promotional billboard. The sign advertised

TWO DOZEN RED ROSES - $16.99

Lucky for the men church I was preaching at I was able to warn them off of this insidious trap of buying two dozen cheap roses for their sweetie's Valentines Day present.

I mean, you buy two dozen this year and what are you going to do next year if the price of roses goes to $29.99 for a dozen? Go back to a single dozen? Cheapskate. You will have just announced that your wife is worth half as much as she was last year. Not recommended. 

And chocolates. Buy a big box and you are insensitive to your wonderful wife's, uh, weight concerns. Be considerate and buy a small box and you are, once again, a cheapo. Buy food for Valentine's Day at your own risk.
The best that might happen is you buy the big box. She politely receives it, stifles her perfectly understandable reaction to your tone deaf insensitivity, doesn't eat the candy, and you get to eat them all.

That would be really clever of you, brother. Let me know how that goes.

How about a thoughtful, handmade  card, with some really sappy bad love poetry of your own composition? You are still a cheap skinflint who will not even spring for a nice card that costs only a few bucks.

Those teddy bears advertised on TV? Grow up. Do people really buy those things?

Lingerie (pronounced by Baptist preachers, "ling-er-ree," and not pronounced in public at all)? Faggedaboutit.

One of those sappy bad art, expensive, Christian paintings by a well known but disgraced artist? Nah.

Frying pan? Sure, email me when you are out of the hospital and I will use your story next year.

Leave it to a Catholic saint to cause a lot of trouble for us but "I love you" is always a winner. Try that with or without any of the above.

No need to thank me. I'm always happy to help, brethren.