Do you celebrate ○○ Day? (ex. Pepero Day, Valentine’s Day)

Every November 11, young people and couples in Korea exchange ‘Pepero’ to share love and friendship. Like ‘Pepero Day’, there are many kinds of special days. From Valentine’s Day (February 14) to White Day (March 14) and Rose Day (May 14), every 14th day marks a romantic occasion. However, the problem is that most of these ‘days’ are excessive commercialism. Therefore, we conducted a survey of 232 CWNU students to figure out how university students think about these “holidays” in culture.

The first question was: ‘Do you celebrate OO Day?’ Unexpectedly, only 16 students (7%) said ‘Yes, I do’ and more than half of students (53%) said they sometimes do and sometimes don’t. 92 students (40%) said ‘No, I don’t.’

Second question: ‘Do you agree with these cultural commercial holidays?’ 80 students (35%) said ‘No’ and 72 students (31%) said ‘Yes’. Though there is a slight difference, yet we could see that many students are negative about it. The others (34%) said ‘I have no idea’.

Next, we asked students who said ‘Yes’, what the biggest reason is. 28 students (39%) said ‘It can be a good culture if we have rational consumption’. The same amount of students said ‘It is a chance to contact and confess our mind’. 16 students (22%) said ‘We can confirm our love and friendship’.

On the contrary, according to the last question, more than half of students said the biggest reason for opposing commercial holidays is that they are likely to spend too much money. Also, 26 students (33%) said ‘It is just a gimmick to increase sales’ and 12 students (15%) said if they don’t receive Pepero or chocolate, they feel alienated.

As you can see, there are various pros and cons to these so-called “holidays”. Clearly, we can enjoy the special days with our loved ones, but you don’t need to feel pressured to buy an expensive gift or treats in fancy packaging. These ‘... days’ are confectionary companies’ inventions of sales marketing, not real anniversaries

Lee Ha-eun  -

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