The marriage license department on the 23rd floor of the Franklin County probate office is a rather sleepy place. It’s got a fantastic bird’s eye view of downtown Columbus, a couple of computers, a massive stack of microfilm records dating back to 1803, and a couple of clerks who, despite being modern-day cupids, seem dedicated to wearing perpetual frowns.  Evidently, it’s always Valentine’s Day there. Even in mid-January, the place was decked out with red tinsel and cute wooden cutouts informing guests that “Love is in the air.” Against one wall, there’s a “kissing booth,” although I’m not sure that any couple has ever kissed there.  The whole place is rather drab, and possibly even disappointing to any romantically-minded individual. There’s a distinct (and somewhat ironic) contrast between the government clerks trying not to fall asleep at their desks and the starry-eyed couples tying the knot.  In many ways, it’s the same kind of stark contrast that exists between commercial Valentine’s Day, with its heart-shaped chocolate boxes and red roses, and the earnest (and perhaps few) men and women who find themselves in the throes of love.  The unfortunate thing about the whole holiday, however, isn’t that there is an ironic difference between commercial romance and the real thing, but that there seems to be a growing number of young people who’ve lost sight of the real thing because all they’ve ever seen is its commercialized imposter. In disgust, they’ve decided to turn from Valentine’s Day to “Palentine’s Day” — or “Galentine’s Day” if you’re into celebrating your girly BFF. If you don’t have a habit of scouring around on social media for the latest trends and developments, you could be forgiven for not realizing that the holiday of love is slowly being supplanted. At this point, it’s escalated beyond a couple of cards for lonely singles. There are t-shirts reading “love stinks, let’s drink” and cheesy Hallmark cards for the gals. Influencers are challenging followers to write “personalized messages” to friends, and brands are leaning into the girls-night-out messaging.  Hypothetically, you could celebrate both holidays if you wanted — Palentine’s Day technically falls on Feb. 13 — but as far as I can tell from scrolling through YouTube Shorts, the whole thing is meant as a replacement. Palentine’s Day is a way for companies to keep getting money, and for sad, single young adults to keep celebrating while feeling a little better about themselves.  The new holiday is becoming increasingly more popular as well (especially in the U.K., for some reason). The Sunday Telegraph reported that Palentine’s Day card sales “have risen sharply,” and that universities have started hosting platonic-love-themed events for students.  The whole thing is a symptom of a wider problem. Gen Z wasn’t really interested in dating in high school and, so far, they don’t appear to be interested in settling down to married life anytime soon. They grew up in a world that sold them candied hearts and cheesy notes and called it love. You can’t really blame them for not wanting to commit to something so apparently cheap. What this generation seems to have missed is that we’ve just buried the kind of romance that builds civilizations beneath the tinsel and roses. The story of that kind of love is kept in massive books of microfilms and on computer hard drives in drab county offices. Even the tired clerks seem to know it — because when one of them handed my husband and me our marriage license, she gave us the kind of smile that lights up a room. READ MORE from Aubrey Gulick Harris: The Odd One Out: Trump Delays TikTok Ban Let’s Not Take Zuckerberg’s Free Speech Promises at Face Value Let’s Talk About the Catholic Mascot, Luce The post Gen Z is Replacing Valentine’s With Palentine’s Day appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.