Black Love Day is the Valentine’s Day alternative celebrating Black love

The celebration that’s affirmed Black lives for over two decades is now online. Illustration via Max Fleishman, The Daily Dot.

Today, Black love fills the air.

Valentine’s Day—an European-centric holiday, which packages romance and “I love yous” around Hallmark cards and boxes of Godiva—is not the only celebration Black people are participating in this weekend. Every year on Feb. 13 is a holiday called Black Love Day.

Ayo Handy-Kendi, 64, is the founder of the African American Holiday Association, a non-profit that seeks to preserve Black culture through tradition and ritual. Handy-Kendi, who also goes by Mama Ayo, created Black Love Day in 1993 as an alternative holiday for Black people to celebrate and love one another at a time of year when love is already in the air.

Black Love Day has risen to prominence over the course of its 23-year history and in recent years, the holiday has become a popular hashtag affirming many forms of Black love on Twitter and Instagram.