Galentine’s Day is celebrated on February 13th, the day before Valentine’s Day. While Valentine’s Day is about romantic celebrations with your partner, Galentine’s Day is a day to celebrate love for your gal pals. It’s a day where you create quality time with female friends to embrace friendship and support each other.
What Does Galentine’s Day Mean?
So, what’s Galentine’s Day? “It’s only the best day of the year!” is the famous quote by Amy Poehler. Poehler starred as Leslie Knope in the sitcom Parks and Recreation. Leslie Knope is a fictional character who created and started Galentine’s Day in a 2010 episode of Parks and Recreation.
Leslie celebrates Galentine’s Day in the sitcom by hanging out with her close female friends and enjoying brunch together. They left their boyfriends and husbands to have quality time, and gathered only with close friends. Strictly no romantic partners. On that special day, they used the moment to nourish and value the importance of friendship.
Not long after, Galentine’s Day became famous and celebrated in real life. It has become a way of paying tribute to best friends and thanking them for their significant presence in life. It’s a reminder of the value of friendship in life.
How to Be a Good a Galentine?
Friendship can be good support for self-growth. The quality of friendship is more important than how many friends you have. Strong friendships foster positive behavior and thinking. Therefore, make efforts to maintain a good friendship, and don’t hesitate to express your affection.
Expressing love and care to friends can be done at any time. However, many people forget that maintaining and strengthening friendships takes effort. You can show effort and care through something more symbolic on Galentine’s Day.
Being a good Galentine isn’t a difficult task. You get to show those close to you what they mean to you. You can do this by celebrating in a variety of ways.
How to Celebrate
When referring to the sitcom Park and Recreation, Leslie usually celebrates Galentine’s Day with her female friends at a restaurant. Sounds simple enough right? Wrong- Leslie spoils her friends with handmade gifts. One year there were handmade mosaic portraits of their faces, bouquets crocheted by hand, and lengthy personal essays.
In another episode about the celebration of Galentine’s Day, Leslie gives her friends personalized embroidered pillows with their faces on them. It’s no surprise that Leslie Knope earned the nickname ‘Master of Gifts.’ However, not everyone has the same creativity or budget as Leslie Knope.
There are so many Galentine’s Day gift ideas on the internet you can choose to buy or make your own at home. Large and small retailers and various online shops provide merchandise for Galentine’s Day. According to the sitcom, celebrating Galentine’s Day includes exchanging gifts, but you don’t have include this with your celebration. A simple gift-free gathering is fun too.
The same applies to the time and location of Galentine’s Day celebrations. Leslie would celebrate Galentine’s Day in a restaurant over brunch, and the reason why Leslie chose brunch time may be because of her love for waffles. Nowadays, many restaurants or cafes offer Galentine’s Day events, and they usually provide Leslie Knope’s favorite menu item- waffles.
Like Valentine’s Day, Galentine’s Day is also not a public holiday. So, you might have to adjust the time and place with friends to gather and celebrate. You can take elements from the Galentine’s traditions of Parks and Recreation while modifying or adding aspects of your creation. Go with what works best for you and your besties.
Is Galentine a Catholic Saint?
No. Galentine’s Day was created by a fictional character from the famous American sitcom Parks and Recreation. The term itself combines the word ‘gal’ or ‘girl’ and Valentine’s Day.
Nevertheless, many fictional writings tell the history of Saint Galentine as a real person. Saint Galentine was described as a female Roman saint in the third century. She promoted the idea of placing female friendship ahead of a lover. Again, the story is just fiction. There has never been any writing or historical journal written about a saint named Galentine.
Final Galentine’s Thoughts
There you have it! Now that you know what Galentine’s Day is all about, you can go and celebrate this day with your favorite gal pals and make the day memorable.
