st. galentine's day.

As my dear friend Leslie Knope would say, "Happy Galentine's Day!" St. Galentine's Day is celebrated the day before St. Valentine's Day and, in my opinion, is a much better holiday. I have seen it all when it comes to Valentine's Day - the fierce believers who labor for hours with gift-crafting and plan-making to the Scrooge-y haters who blame Hallmark for those annoying commercials and the excessive red and pink everything. Wherever you may fall on the spectrum, let's put aside all notions of what the 14th is supposed to mean (love, relationships, significant others, blah blah blah) and think about what the 13th should represent - our best gals. While Leslie Knope, and thus St. Galentine's Day, is completely fictitious and stems from my favorite comedy show, I say why not celebrate such a wonderful holiday idea? While Leslie goes all out for her best girlfriends (needlepoint pillows with pictures of famous headlines from the day you were born, for example), I would settle for just lovely dinner table filled with wine and treats and stories and laughter. Unfortunately for me, the majority of my best girlfriends are not in New York but elsewhere on the globe - from Vermont to Chicago to Idaho to California to Chile to Japan to Kenya and to lots of other places in between! A simple dinner with all my favorite girlfriends doesn't come as easy for me as it does for others. So instead, ladies, I'm coming on this blog to say, whatever your tomorrow may bring, I hope you know that today, I'm thinking about all my best gals, all the fun times we've had, and all the fun times I hope to have in the future despite our worldy distance from each other. I love you gals.

For more information about St. Galentine's Day, you may click on this link and watch the first video clip from Parks & Rec's first mention of Galentine's Day two years ago.

The best party is a gals-only party: