and cynical and wasteful and exploitative...

I'm not sure about cynical or saccharine (whats that mean anyways?), but both christmas and easter seem pretty wasteful, exploitative, and overwrought to me.

Sugary.
As for Christmas and Easter, Easter always struck me as being sort of harmlessly goofy, and Christmas, while heavily commercialized, never turned my stomach the way V-Day does (well, except for those Christmas letters my uncle sends out). Besides, Christmas is fun :p
I'm just pointing out what I was exposed to in public school, and my experience was that Valentine's was by far the most visible (yes, even moreso than Christmas) and gag-inducing of the lot. Now that I've been away from that for some years, I take little notice of it.

Saccharine: THIS is an excellent example. I'm pretty much Igor in this scene...
It's always seemed cynical because of the "spend more money than anyone else you know or your girlfriend will hate you!" vibe. Basically its made a holiday out of commercial emotional blackmail.
Obviously the others are equally money focussed but without the implied threat

Besides, there's nothing like getting a day off work for someone else's religious holiday, I say :p

Sugary/pink overload much?
Behold! I give you Smile.DK!

You guys are mean... I can't visit Youtube at work :(

no way to use a proxy?

Smile.dk has some music videos at their official site (not the one I linked at youtube though, but that one's no video).
As for "The Vampire Strikes Back", Aliasalpha'd have to look up that one.

now then you know what to do first thing after work :)

Besides taking a shower and eating whatever you can find?

Jeez, that's so cynical! You should be more optimistic, like I am; I know that one day I'm going to meet that one special woman, perfect for me, who was born without a voice box.
Also, here's more cheering up stuff that's mean for people who can't watch youtube, a hliarious song many people have already seen paired with WOW or other videos, but this is a live version to keep the potential lameness lower. Though how could a song about zombies eating your brain presented in the form of business speak in an interoffice memo be?
Re: Your Brains
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjcH2UmK1uo
I went and bought it on Amazon after stumbling across it pretty much by accident there. Well worth the 99 cents and I'll be checking out more of this guy's stuff now. If you can't get youtube or just want to hear a quick sample right away, here it is at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Re-Your-Brains/dp/B000ZHXER4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1250790754&sr=8-2
where you can play a bit of it to see if you like it.

You like the voice of Stephen Hawking?

Here, this ought to help you guys remain happy. =)

There's definitely nothing like a shamwow to cheer someone up. Especially when you double their order!
Memegenerator.net is a lot of fun to play with ...