For the last five years, the text from my friend Hannah has arrived mid-January–Galentine’s Day is now just one month away, and will I be in attendance? Without fail, my answer is “yes.” For love of Hannah and of parties, yes, but also the idea of the holiday itself: to celebrate not just the women but the people in your life whose love comes from the beauty of friendship. Noteworthy is that this year the invitation included an illustration of two grandmas in luscious pink and orange fur coats.
Galentine’s Day really does come from the television show Parks and Recreation. Every year on February 13, the indomitable Leslie Knope, the series tells us, throws a party for all of her girlfriends. The premise is “ladies celebrating ladies,” as she says. No husbands, no boyfriends, no partners, just breakfast foods and friendship, “like Lilith Fair without the angst.” At a long table, there are frittatas and waffles and gifts and stories. Galentine’s is not meant in opposition to Valentine’s Day, but in addition to it; as if to say, this kind of love deserves to be celebrated, too.
Parks and Rec was a wild success during its original time on air and continues to enjoy a fruitful life in the streaming age. The reach of Galentine’s specifically has extended far beyond the show since the eponymous episode originally aired 15 years ago, in 2010–Amy Poehler has famously continued her celebrations; plus, Michelle Obama has celebrated; it’s been added to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as of 2022; and it’s even been deemed trinket-worthy by big-box stores.
But, as with any holiday, the stuff you can buy is not what it’s really about. As we get older, how often do we really get to be in the same room with all of our friends for a single evening? A birthday, maybe; a wedding; some other milestone. People move away, they have children, they have crazy travel schedules. It’s noteworthy that people can and do make time for such a gathering.
So this past weekend, there we were. Hannah had decorated her apartment with elegant pillar candles that gave off warm light, pink roses, and her metallic pink fringe backdrop perfect for photos. Her signature gift table, culled from her life as a dating editor, offered a bounty of books and beauty products, sexy oils and toys. We place White Elephant gifts on the table for later.
“Be hot! Have fun!” Hannah wrote for the evening’s dress code, so I picked a ripped Billy Joel concert shirt and leather pants with wild blue eyeshadow and matching patent leather boots. There were gals in red sequins, gals in satin pajamas, gals in hot pink skirts sipping rose and Prosecco and seltzer and non-alcoholic spritzes. We snacked on shrimp and caviar dip, deviled eggs, pizzas, raspberry cupcakes with swirls of pink icing and jammy centers, and chocolate pretzels. It was a bounty of glam and coziness.
I was never really a Valentine’s Day person. In fact, I spent most of them single and often railed against what felt like the nonsense of the day’s happiness only belonging to a select few. Interestingly, though, even in my angst, my parents always thought of the holiday as a day for all of us–I remember one year in college my mother sent me a giant box filled with my favorite chocolate chip cookies; another year, after I moved to New York, they sent me a giant, four-foot teddy bear. They made me feel like I mattered even when, revealing only my own defense mechanisms, I made my distaste for the holiday all-too-well-known. Having spent the majority of their own lives single, they knew how it felt. We love you, they said. You have us. Of course they were worth celebrating, too. Traditional Valentine’s Day narratives don’t always make space for love outside of romantic partnership. Real love doesn’t need only one day.
The spaces beyond traditional narratives are always the places I’ve enjoyed being most, whether it’s with Valentine’s Day, with any of my work or, well, anywhere else. And while I do have a partner now and we do celebrate Valentine’s Day, it’s in an actively more anti-establishment way, as we’re both wont to do with…everything. To be a part of Galentine’s is a thrill in its own way for the same reason. At Galentine’s Day, friendship, love of a different kind, matters. I am valuable because I am me, not because I do or don’t have a partner.
The last time I had a gaggle of girlfriends I was in high school–the group I went to prom with, did sleepovers, had birthdays, had lunch with. I have that less now. I went on a trip with some girlfriends recently, but it was my first ever “girls’ trip.” For many of the reasons I mentioned above, many of my girlfriends aren’t in New York anymore, if they ever lived here to begin with. They moved away, they had families, they have lives of their own somewhere else, though we’re lucky we intersect whenever they’re or I’m in town. For the most part, I see all of my friends on a one-to-one basis now. At Galentine’s, being invited into the fold comes with a sense of belonging. I imagine this is what Leslie Knope wanted for her gals, too. Here, with me, you matter, and you always will.
At Hannah’s we exchange White Elephant gifts, tell salty stories, make our picks from her infamous gift table. We talk about sex and skincare and bad blowouts, fostering cats and new jobs, new projects, new jewelry, new loves. Glasses are emptied and refilled, shoes are kicked off, and we take pictures with the sparkly pink fringe behind us. I think there’s a lot of this kind of party that can get lost in the Instagram of it all, but for the most part people’s phones are put away unless it’s photo time. They’re engaged with each other. Snow falls outside, but the warmth inside keeps the cold at bay. On nights like this, I am a part of a phenomenon larger than myself: Galentine’s, yes, but friendship overall. Love.
