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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