Maybe you are cynical about Valentine’s Day, or just not into cutesy pink hearts and Valentine’s tchotckes that basically have no purpose except to commemorate an arbirtrarily chosen date but that you can’t get rid of. Like my son got me this giant plush white bear holding an embroidered plush heart…

There are options. Maybe you celebrate Galentine’s Day, and go out with your girlfriends. Or, alternatively, if you love a good scare, you could take some inspiration from artist Brandy Stark, and celebrate Valentwe’en. Brandy celebrates by holding an art show and a ghost tour. On the Valentwe’en Facebook page, she writes:

While the normal person celebrates Valentine’s Day with roses, romance, and chocolates, we who embrace Valentwe’en enjoy a time of dark romance, the Grim Cupid, and cuddling with fellow creatures of the night. For those who have longed for a second Halloween, your entreaties have been answered! Valentwe’en offers the fun of bonding for couples merged with the thrill of supernatural intrusions. It is a true collision of these two candy-filled holidays, a spiraling combination of love and death, sweetness and suspense. Valentwe’en falls on the first full moon of February or it may be held February 13th. It consists of offering black flowers to one’s love (especially black calla lilies), Halloween-themed candy, and becoming entranced by movies from genres of horror, dark romance, or dark romantic comedy. This holiday is still evolving, so the rest of the celebration is up to you!

Not being a person who does a great job tracking the phases of the moon or even dates on a calendar, my plan is to celebrate today. I’m a laid-back sort of person (meaning that I forgot to make plans) but it’s just me and two tweens on a school night, so Oreo fudge and a mildly scary family movie are about all I’ll be up to. If you want to put a little more energy into it, here are some literary ideas you can explore with the one you love (or at least love to eat candy with).

One thing that’s pretty awesome is that there are many Gothic and horror-themed books that have been made into movies and that also involve a memorable meal.  One of the most interesting of these is Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, which was made into a movie that was originally released on Valentine’s Day, and has a well-known line from Hannibal Lecter:

Well, okay, maybe that is not the dinner you want to recreate. You could come up with a nice Italian red, though. You all might need that more than dinner while watching this movie, anyway.

If you want to prepare something more elegant, you will find a carefully researched, surprisingly elaborate meal fit for a vampire when Diana Bishop first invites Matthew Clairmont to dinner, in chapter 12 of A Discovery of Witches, the first book in the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness: smoked salmon with dill, capers, and gherkins; Riesling; thinly sliced raw vension; beets with shaved Parmesan; red wine; seared rabbit spiced with rosemary, celery, pepper; a biscuit made from ground chestnuts; berries, cheese, and roasted chestnuts. Diana may not know true love, but the meal truly is a labor of love. Matthew manages to consume everything except the beets. Although I do know people who would be delighted to eat their meat raw, if your company doesn’t belong to that group, they might still go for the smoked salmon, berries, cheese, and nuts, with plenty of wine. “Wine tastes wonderful,” Matthew says, and so long as you have plenty of that, you can stream A Discovery of Witches, now on Shudder and Sundance Now, with the one you love.

Maybe you’d rather have a night out? It would take some planning, because you’d have to get there, and reservations are suggested, but you could have a night out at The Beetle House, a Halloween/Tim Burton-themed restaurant with locations in New York and Los Angeles. I’m not sure how unique the dishes actually are, but their names are catchy, and it sounds like the waitstaff dresses in character. Chef Zach Neil said,

“The idea was simple. Create a space where people who love Halloween, horror films, and Gothic dark music can gather for a meal and drinks. A safe space where it really feels like Halloween all year round and people can come and enjoy good food, good drinks, listen to good music, and feel completely comfortable to be as freaky as they want to be. This would be my home for the freaks, weirdos, and grown up Goth kids of the city.”

Zach also has a cookbook now,  The Nightmare Before Dinner,  so if you can’t get out to the coasts, you can at least recreate the food (and with planning, the atmosphere). Treat yourselves with a macabre meal and follow it up with the Tim Burton movie of your choice. Or any scary movie.

Whatever you choose, we hope you go into it with your whole heart, like Horatio, here. Happy Valentwe’en from all of us at Monster Librarian.