About February Fourteenth

It so happened that conversations about "Valentine's Day" always irritated me considerably. After all, February 14 is my father's birthday; for many years in my memory it was celebrated precisely as a family holiday. Then suddenly some remarkably pushy propaganda became associated with this day. Its main thrust is imposing on impressionable citizens the need to buy gifts — both in the form of red hearts and all sorts of others. Moreover, the holiday being planted on our soil became an excuse for journalists to retell all sorts of nonsense about the supposed roots of this "tradition." Like the overwhelming majority of remarkable stories from the lives of saints, these tales have nothing in common with either historical truth or simple logic... So I am inclined to associate the holiday that descended upon us not with any tradition, but simply with merchants' greed and journalists' manipulations. Not the most inspiring background, whatever you say. Now I don't know how to react when some kind person congratulates me on this holiday. Dismissively respond something like "that's no holiday"? Offend someone who didn't mean to offend me. Respond with a happy smile: "and the same to you"? Sort of like supporting a silly tradition. I haven't found the right tone yet... But this year I did see that however one feels about this holiday, it has caught on with the people. And one can judge this not by how many tacky "valentines" are sold, but by other indicators. I regularly check Google Analytics or Yandex Metrica, tracking how this website "performs." By finding out where readers come from, how they navigate the site, and which pages are read most, one can learn many useful things. Here is the simplest metric — the number of visitors coming to the site each day, from Google Analytics: [IMG_1] The thin gray lines with labeled dates are Sundays. One can see that the weekly minimum in site visitors (fewer than 400 per day) falls on Saturday. All other days are better. Interestingly, among weekdays, the "weakest" is Friday, while on Sundays, quite a few visitors come to my site. The established pattern in visit dynamics was disrupted on New Year's, and, surprisingly, on February 14. There were fewer visitors than on Saturdays. Apparently, they were busy with something else..