On Valentine's Day , the sitcom, ‘High kick! Counterattack of Short Legs’, opened with a scene where Park Ha-sun, a Korean teacher, was making some house-shaped chocolate cookies for her boyfriend. On every Valentine’s Day or White Day, actors or actresses perform giving their presents to their girlfriends or boyfriends. This shows that most Koreans enjoy celebrating trivial anniversaries such as Valentine’s Day, White Day, etc.
However, these days, I feel that the level of presents that people give and receive for expressing their love on anniversaries is different from the past. In the past, although we knew that trivial anniversaries were snack companies’ sales gimmicks, we used these anniversaries as a means of expressing our love or gratitude by giving small presents. However, as the atmosphere of society has quickly changed, the gift trend also seems to have changed.
On February 12th, ‘Sinsegae Department Store’ conducted a survey of 820 customers, aged from twenty to forty, about presents which men want to receive on Valentine’s Day. The results showed that I-pad took the first ranking in the survey, and Galaxy Tap and tablet pcs followed it. Chocolate was not even included in the list. Through these results, the price of presents which people want to receive on anniversaries has highly increased compared to the past.
Tedious anniversaries which were used for expressing their sincere minds with small presents deteriorated into days of giving and receiving expensive presents. Sharing their minds with each other became another planet’s story, and only material demand is increasing. Materialism is playing a role in the center of this deterioration. How much people respect their boyfriends or girlfriends is determined by the price of gifts that people give. However, the material burden caused by expressing their love results in a burden on the relationships themselves. It is the opposite effect. To keep constructive relationships, people should change their awareness of anniversaries and presents. Anniversaries are not days about giving and taking presents but giving and receiving hearts. Furthermore, presents have to be a means to express their minds not to meet their partners’ material desires.
When Valentine’s Day or White Day are near, we can easily see banners that read, “Make chocolate yourself, and give hand-made chocolate to your love,” and ”Activities making chocolate” around the school. I hope that their sincere minds about making presents and thinking about their lovers’ smiles will not change.