It's beyond time to celebrate Singles' Day properly in the UK – we can't be afraid to be alone anymore

Today is dedicated to the single people of China. All the single ladies and all the single fellas are celebrating their freedom from romantic commitment right now, on the aptly named Singles’ Day. It is on the eleventh day of the eleventh month because the number one signifies a person standing on their own (it also, confusingly, signifies two people standing next to one another, so there are quite a few weddings on 11/11).

Young people in China celebrate being single by going out at night, throwing parties and, somewhat magnificently, buying extravagant presents for themselves. Carrie Bradshaw, who always argued that couples shouldn’t get all the presents when single people deserve some sort of commercial reward for being fabulous too, would be extremely pleased. In fact, it’s the most lucrative shopping day of the year in China – last year, singles spent around £14bn in that 24 hours alone. Presumably the bulk of that was on bath bombs, scented candles and DVDs of The Notebook, but that’s just conjecture.

Now, I’m a big fan of this national holiday. Being single is an important, transformative, glorious time in a person’s life that all too often gets dismissed as a waiting period between romantic relationships. It is a relationship status in its own right and ought to be treated with both reverence and glee. If it were possible to make it mandatory for adult human beings to be single for a minimum of one year, I would do it in a heartbeat. Longer, if possible. I’ve done it for a couple of years at a time during my life and each time, proved to myself that I can survive on my own, enjoy my own company and really cherish my friends in a way that you sometimes, guiltily, forget to do when you’re in love.