Ok fuck it. I'm in a shitty mood, I'll get my teeth into something.
Valentine's day is a romantic holiday. Maybe I should bore you with the history, but I don't think it's particularly relevant. What we have now however is a day which celebrates love, of varying kinds, but usually of romantic love.
Adults who have small children usually also have a partner they are intimate with. It's normal for children to copy behaviours that these adults display, because it's how they develop the concept of what is and what isn't acceptable social behaviour.
Later on, when these children start school, they may come into contact with celebrations their parents may have invested time into - such as Valentine's day. The schools will often put on some little display or have a talk or suggest that children send each other little cards.
However, something that comes into play, every day if you are a woman, but especially so at Valentine's, is the idea that your love can be bought or bartered for. This involves accepting gifts in return for friendship, or if you are an adult woman, rewarding your male partner with sex for gifting you chocolates or roses. This is because society feels that women cannot not enjoy sex and so must be appropriately reimbursed for offering it.
So we have society's perception of femininity and sex, we have that mingled in with Valentine's day, and we have young children involved too, which perpetuates the whole thing because they end up growing up with the same beliefs as their parents, who incidentally exist in a sexist society.
Another concept of femininity in our society is the idea that women should be meek and accepting. To be polite is an important skill - it is to say "thank you" when someone has helped you, or to say "please" when asking for something. To be meek is to accept a gift from a boy you don't know on a day which is about convincing girls to be your friend by coercing them with gifts - or about convincing your wife to have sex with you by buying her two dozen red roses.
The children don't know this, they are innocent. But we endorse it by either allowing it or being blind to it.
And so, I will teach my daughter that if she doesn't want to accept a gift - anonymous or not - on Valentine's day from a boy she doesn't know, then she doesn't have to. No, his feelings on the matter are not important in this instance - his right to feel validated and pleased at her attention does not overrule her right to refuse the gift she does not want from the person she does not know.
I don't care if my "outlook" is "sad", or if I "read too much into things", or even if I "care too much" - but it's fuck all to do with being "polite".
Now I've taken this far too far by bothering to write this and you'll probably either ignore it or rip me to bits for being too involved or getting the whole of society (including little boys intentions) wrong.
Hope you both have a lovely Valentine's day.