Will Valentine’s Day be Under Attack Again?

Quickly, Mahmoud removes the wicker baskets full of red bears and chocolates from his display window. And then he takes down the heart-shaped red balloons from the store’s walls and doors. He leaves just a few red lanterns hanging from the ceiling.

Just a few weeks ago, Mahmoud had enthusiastically ordered Valentine’s Day merchandise so that he could sell it in his shop. But then a few days ago, an agent from the police department at the Bureau of Public Places came in and told him that he would face legal action if he continued to sell Valentine’s Day gifts. Mahmoud runs a shop that sells dolls in the prosperous northern part of Tehran.

“I decided that it’d be better if I didn’t display the Valentine’s Day merchandise,” Mahmoud says. “Our customers know that we have Valentine’s Day gifts and that if they ask for them I’ll bring them out. But I can’t have them on display.”

He is unsure if agents visited other shopkeepers in the neighborhood. “I have no idea whether all stores like mine have received similar warnings or not. It was only when I saw the directive from the Bureau of Public Places to the Coffee Shops Guild that I decided to take it seriously and remove all the Valentine gifts from display.”

On Thursday, February 11, the Coffee Shops Guild posted the following directive on its official site: “Businesses are not allowed to promote and offer any merchandise under the premise of Valentine’s Day. Boys and girls cannot meet to exchange gifts like dolls and flowers or chocolates in any cafe business. If they do, the business and the person responsible for it will face consequences.”

“They’ve put the fear in me now. A few years ago when they really insisted on it, we paid no attention,” Mahmoud says. “They harassed us a lot, I had to pay a fine and all the to-ing and fro-ing was really exhausting. You need shoes of steel to resolve such things. But days like this are good for businesses like mine and we can make a really good profit.”

Sadegh owns a small card shop in central Tehran. At the moment, his shop is filled with Valentine’s Day cards. Small red dolls with hearts hang on the walls. But he says he hasn’t received any warnings.

“They’re after the shops uptown,” Sadegh explains. “They don’t bother us here.”

This is not the first time that businesses have received warnings about selling Valentine’s Day gifts. The authorities in the Islamic Republic authorities view celebrating the day as a threat, and a promulgation of Western culture and decadence.

Four years ago, the Iranian Customs Bureau published a directive to its offices banning the import and selling of merchandise that in any way represents or promotes Valentine’s Day. The Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution’s Committee for Cultural Affairs ordered the directive. In a letter to the head of the Customs Bureau, the committee’s secretary stated that Valentine’s Day was a clear example of anti-religious cultural invasion by “capitalist imperialists” intended to weaken family values in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Degenerate Western Culture

I spoke with Farhad, who works for one of the best known coffee shops in Tehran. “Around elections they are not usually very strict,” he says. He has seen the directive for coffee houses  online, though. “We didn’t really have anything special planned for the day, but a lot of people do come in. They order something to drink and exchange gifts.”

I ask him what he would do if he saw customers coming in with very obvious — banned — Valentine’s Day gifts. “Nothing,” he says without hesitation. “They are customers. I cannot tell them what to do.”

Mehdi runs a small coffee shop in Andisheh, about 30 kilometers from Tehran. Each year on Valentine’s day he organizes an event there. “In the past, we advertised t it. People brought gifts and we decorated the cafe in a Valentine’s Day theme. It’s been fun and something different — and our business has been good.” But following the new directive, he says he does not want to risk hosting such an event. “It is not worth the trouble,” he says. “Of course I don’t know for sure. Maybe the directive only applies to coffee shops in Tehran.”

For the most part, Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Iran’s larger cities. But in recent years, it has spread to smaller towns, with reports of young people in these cities marking the holiday too. Unsurprisingly, it has not gone down well with the authorities. The Bureau of Public Places in Garmsar, a town south of Tehran with a population of less than 40,000, followed Tehran’s suit and issued a similar Valentine’s Day directive to businesses, banning “red dolls, red roses, chocolate, Valentine’s Day cards, perfumes and colognes, heart-shaped items with ‘I Love You’ written on them”, and other Valentine’s-specific gifts. The directive also bans shops from putting up decorative lights.

Twenty-one year-old Leila is busy preparing her Valentine’s Day gifts. “I made the red gift box myself. I bought the tissue paper, a bear and a heart...I still need to buy chocolate, which I’ll put in the heart.” But because she lives in Yazd, one of the most religious cities in Iran, she has to be careful, and has hidden the gifts under her bed so her family don’t find out. “We had planned on going to the Silk Road Hotel, but now Hamid says we can’t. They might harass us if they see us with the gifts.” Then she laughs and says, “Well, maybe I can hide them in a big black bag.”

This article was originally published in February 2016.

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