Monday, January 18, 2016

Submission # 1: To what extent are certain holidays just marketing schemes?





There are two reasons why I started wondering about this question; the first is because I was at a Hallmark store and I was wondering how they got their name so I googled it and came across the term ‘Hallmark Holiday’, and the second reason was because I was watching the movie ‘Hocus Pocus’ and one of the main characters complained that Halloween was a holiday made up by candy companies to sell more candy thus making more money. This got me thinking of how many holidays and holiday traditions were made up just for money making purposes, and why. I also wondered how these popular made up holiday traditions affect our judgment when it comes to how we celebrate someone or something.
            A Hallmark holiday is defined as “a holiday that is perceived to exist primarily for commercial purposes, rather than to commemorate a traditionally or historically significant event”. It then goes on to say, “The name comes from Hallmark Cards, a privately owned American company, that benefit from such manufactured events through sales of greeting cards and other items. Holidays those have been referred to as "Hallmark Holidays" include Grandparents Day, Sweetest Day, Boss's Day, Secretary's Day, St. Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Father's Day.” While I was searching up more information on ‘Hallmark Holidays’, I came across this website (http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/mothers-day-in-america-historical-or-hallmark-holiday/) with an infographic that was all about Mother’s Day. 
It says that the origin of Mother’s day was so mothers could stand together and protest their sons in the war injuring other mother’s sons. There were flower companies who looked at this holiday and saw that they could make a profit out of it by telling everyone to send gifts and flowers to their mothers on this day. This holiday has been so exploited that it has turned from a day of sentiment to a day of profit.

            Mother’s day is such a popular holiday, which means that there is a lot of advertising for it; because it is such a popular holiday, many people will be tricked into buying things for their mothers. There will be a lot of deals on jewelry, makeup, flowers, etc. This can impair someone’s judgment because they will always want to get their mother something special and might get tricked into buying something unnecessarily expensive. Also, if someone chooses not to celebrate Mother’s day or to not buy anything, they might be met with outside criticism and be pressured. All of these things benefit companies because we will be spending all this money on a holiday that doesn’t even deal with buying gifts in the first place. This holiday, among others has been changed to benefit those who make money from it, by doing so it removes the thought that the holiday should be about, not about the amount of money you spend on someone. In a TOK standpoint, this again affects our judgment on how to react to these holidays because we don’t blindly follow these lucrative traditions because we believe that there is a deeper meaning behind it. By doing this, we become blind to what the holiday is really about. Again, as an example, we use mother’s day to celebrate mothers, when in reality, its mothers who are standing up for their family.

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