Why Was There No Valentine's Day Article This Year?

February 16, 2004

For the past two years on DCGreeks.com, we’ve brought you stories (well, actually, the same story, and its conclusion) celebrating how two young-adults found each other in this crazy, mixed-up Greek community that we live in. This year we decided to forego all that, when we came to the realization that the Greek community here in DC really doesn’t want to celebrate two people finding each other and all the other things that are wrapped up into this holiday. It’s not that Greek-Americans are not happy for each other when they see someone in this community find someone, particularly when its someone else from this community (well, it depends on who it is) -- they just don’t want to physically see them being together. 

A strange thing happens when a couple forms in the DC Greek community. As quickly as they get together and make the mistake of going to a Greek event together, they disappear off the face of the earth. About 90% of Greek events you’ll go to these days are specifically tailored to, and attended by people who are looking to meet someone. With that said, if you’re with someone, these events lose their appeal to you, and more specifically, the people at the events really don’t care if you’re there or not. About the only place you’ll ever see a Greek couple anymore is at church, maybe at a church festival, and at maybe one or two key events a year, like something on the level of a Laconian Dance.

So on Valentine’s Day Weekend, a time where couples go one way and singles go another, there was really no place Greek for the couples to go. Most of the single young adults decided to hop on a plane and go to Chicago for the annual YAL conference that takes place on President’s Day Weekend. Locally, the AHEPA Biennial Conference was in town, with a semi-formal dance at the Marriott Wardman Park in Northwest D.C., on Valentine’s Day evening. Sadly, little if any young adults attended, leaving the dance floor to the over-60 crowd that was in attendance. 

Honestly, we don’t know if couples our age would ever consider a Greek dance to be a Valentine’s Day option. If you’re going dancing on Valentine’s Day, you usually couple that with a nice dinner beforehand, which too many Greek dances don’t even offer these days, and then dancing in a fashion that actually encourages physical contact. The fact that our culture never developed a dance that promotes long, slow, physical touching is a mystery. We’re sorry, a line dance doesn’t really inspire romance, when on the one hand you could have the love of your life next to you, and on literally the other hand, you could have anyone ranging from your first cousin to an annoying former Greek school classmate that doesn’t notice who is on your other hand. It is a wonder there are successive generations of Greeks anywhere on this planet, after you’ve watched the misfired seduction of a zeimbekiko or a tsifteteli –- two people going around each other and never ever touching. Go to other parts of D.C. and watch a salsa or a tango in action, and then you begin to question if we are really as passionate as an ethnic group as the rest of the world thinks we are.

So for those of you out there who wrote us the last two years telling us of how sick you were of reading articles about happy couples on our Valentine’s Day editions, you got your wish. For you couples out there that are happy -- and in hiding –- come out and visit us some time. For everyone else – have you checked out our Member Directory lately?

Read past feature articles