By Staff Writer: Adhithya Rajagopalan
Do you know what Valentine’s Day originated from? Do you know why we celebrate Veteran’s Day? How about Labor Day or Memorial Day? If you question or have questioned these facts you might consider to be common knowledge, maybe you’d be shocked to hear how disconnected the American population is from its holidays. With a little bit of inspection, you may find you don’t know why you celebrate some of the holidays you do.
Personally, I began to question what I celebrate when I was around 16. It started with Christmas and Easter, and as I’m not a Christian, I didn’t understand why our family celebrated those, although I could appreciate the sense of togetherness Christmas fostered. Then I began to investigate Thanksgiving, and although like Christmas in its current meaning, it originated from a meal of deceit had with the Native Americans upon colonization, right before they were mercilessly killed. These revelations sparked a sense of freedom; I had been participating in something I didn’t identify with for years, but now that I knew what it was, I had a choice.
Just like myself, many people either do not care enough to know the meanings of each holiday or they have just never been properly informed. In a 2020 poll of 2000 Americans, 57% did not know the meaning of Memorial Day, 54% did not know when it was, and 36% do not know the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Moreover, holiday literacy has drastically improved since the spread of the internet, so just imagine how little and how few people understood these holidays in 1990, for example.
In my opinion, the capitalist lifestyle is to blame. Most Americans work a 9 to 5 job and get little time off in compensation for their efforts. The normal, overworked, middle-class American has no care for the actual significance of any holiday, just for the time they get to spend with family and friends, and they time they get to spend away from work.
Stores, who are completely within their own rights here, take advantage of this period of happiness to endorse commercialism and serial buying. Christmas endorses gift giving, Easter promotes egg hunts, Independence Day means fireworks, Valentine’s Day is for candy, flowers, and other romantic gifts. Those are just the tip of the iceberg. Most holidays have some attached commercial necessity, and where there isn’t, people are only ever excited about time off, but why? Why not enjoy the holiday for its meaning and what it is?
Holidays are a very positive aspect of society, and by all means, don’t change what’s not broken. I simply think people would prefer to be informed of the meanings behind each holiday both so they can make their own choices and so they can find less enjoyment out of materialism and more from however they interpret the holiday itself. You won’t know until you find out!
https://nypost.com/2020/05/21/most-americans-have-no-clue-why-we-celebrate-memorial-day/