Valentine's Day 2024: TikTok users show off their Valentine's baskets - but some people are confused by them

Valentine's Day is just around the corner - and many people are excitedly preparing gifts for their loved ones to show their appreciation for them.

After all, February 14 is declared as the most romantic day of the year every year and so it's always a day when people show their care for each other by the exchanging of gifts.

This year, many people are putting together their own Valentine's baskets for their loved one. These baskets are brimming with lots of different products which are chosen specifically to suit the recipient's tastes - from beauty and fashion products, to food items, and also personalised presents - all beautifully presented and tied with ribbons and pink and red bows.

The options for what to add in these baskets are seemingly endless, as long as the products are small enough to be contained within a basket, and videos with the hashtag #ValentinesBasket have gone viral, gaining hundreds of thousands of views each.

But, though Valentine's Day is traditionally for couples, these baskets are being made for people's beaus, best friends, children and pets. One woman, for example, showed herself adding wooden toys, clothing and books in to two red and pink baskets for her toddlers.

The mum also revealed that she doesn't wait for Valentine's Day itself to give these presents to her little ones. She gave these baskets to her young children on February 1, to begin 'love month'.

Another mum, whose daughter is now six-years-old, said she had been making a Valentine's basket for her since she was just nine-months-old. She fimed herself in a supermarket choosing items for her daughter's basket this year, including heart-shaped chocolate, a pink tumbler and pink and red clothing.

Another man showed how he created baskets for both his wife and daughter ahead of Valentine's Day on Wednesday. He captioned the video "they deserve the world", and showed himself adding products such as make-up, jewellery and bath and body products in to respective baskets.

Some users are impressed by this approach to gifting, saying the idea is "super sweet", but others are less convinced. One commenter said that the whole idea of Valentine's Day is a "con", while another said the idea encouraged people to spend more money than necessary as giving just one gift was "more than enough" to mark V-Day.

Another user posted a video expressing her confusion at the recipients of the baskets specifically. She wrote: "Are we doing Valentine's baskets for kids now? Because I keep seeing it all over my social media and I didn't know about it until TikTok. But, now I'm seeing everybody is buying Valentine's gifts for their kids. I've never done that. . . Why are people buying stuff for their kids? I don't get it."

She also went on to say that she understood if people wanted to buy their children something small, such as a chocolate lolly, but she didn't understand the need to buy a basket full of goodies. She went on to question "how much flipping pressure do we want to put on ourselves?", and bemoaned that the tradition of buying baskets or boxes full of gifts seems to have been normalised for all times of year - including Easter baskets, Christmas Eve boxes and December baskets.

She ended the video by saying that she had started questioning whether or not she should be making a Valentine's basket for her children because of all the videos she had seen online, but concluded that "Valentine's Day has nothing to do with little kids" and said "I will not bow down to pressure on social media".

The video was captioned: "I find it so interesting how people are influenced by socials, you have to be strong willed to not be taken in by it all."

One user commented: "I always got a little present from my mum, and I always get my daughter a card and a little gift - but I don't do anything for my partner." Another person said: "I get a 25p card each for them from Asda and a chocolate lolly or something similar but definitely no gift baskets!"

Other commenters agreed with the mum's sentiments, but others defended their choice to create and buy baskets for their children, saying they enjoyed buying things for them and it was a "show of love".