ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Wednesday, December 25, 1996           TAG: 9612260012
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 3    EDITION: HOLIDAY 
COLUMN: BEN BEAGLE
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE

AS HOLIDAYS GO, VALENTINE'S DAY IS EASY ON HEART AND BACK

As far as I'm concerned, you can put all the Christmas carol CDs away and enjoy yourself a little.

Some of us have reached that annual happy time in our lives when we don't care if all the lights on the top of the tree go out again. They can stay off until sometime after St. Swithin's Day.

It doesn't worry us when the electric window candles burn out. We don't have to run up and down the steps replacing the bulbs anymore.

There'll soon be no more worry about the Christmas tree with this great big root ball on it, which weighs as much as your average asteroid.

I'm as much for the environment as anybody. I've crushed enough beer cans, sorted enough plastic and baled enough newspapers to pay my dues.

But I do tend to favor trees that are cut off above the ground, don't come with an acre of Floyd County attached to them, and don't test your upper-body strength so much.

I'll learn again that it's a lot easier to put lights on a tree than it is to take them off. I may even swear a little; Christmas being over and all.

We'll take the tree out of the tub, put it in the pickup, go plant it on Bent Mountain and I'll have a whole year to forget that my daughter-in-law can outlift me.

And the chances are pretty good that my back will be well by Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day, as we all know, is a really, really, sweetsie-poo, sickening holiday but it isn't as life-threatening as Christmas.

There's no such thing as a Valentine's tree and - unless you want the neighbors to talk - you don't put candles in the window in February.

Let me say here, however, that if we did have Valentine's trees, the top lights would go off a lot.

Valentine's Day shopping is easy. You just go to a card store on Feb.13 and buy a card and a box of candy - ideally in a heart-shaped box.

You don't give people clothing on Valentine's Day and you don't have to worry about anything fitting. You ever hear of anybody taking a box of candy back because it was too big?

On Valentine's Day nobody comes up while you're relaxing - maybe wondering who chooses the music for the local forecast on the Weather Channel - and says:

"You old fool. You forgot the oysters again this year."

Even if you think Valentine's Day is too sweet for its own good, it's a holiday that's here and gone pretty quick.

And nobody has to lift anything.

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