Illa writes about the fact that there’s no St. Valentine on February 14th. There has been such a saint until 1969, but the Catholic church has decided there’s not enough evidence the saint really existed.
That brought me to the thought about other holidays, created in the US, mainly. There’s a Mother’s day, a Father’s day, and many others days (see for example St. Patrick’s day). In my youth, in Bulgaria we celebrated 8th of March as the International Women’s Day, and June 1st as the Children’s Day.
I believe that some of those holidays are being explored by the card- and envelope-producing companies to make tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. People love showing attention. Even more – people love being shown attention. Therefore you can enter any farmacie in the US, and you will find a section of pre-arranged post cards for different occasions – birthdays, Mom’s and Dad’s days, just saying “thank you”, etc., etc. See Hallmark’s site for more…
What the cards do, is that they prevent people from thinking. Instead of making their own wish, people buy cards with wishes, created by the marketing departments of the big card-making companies. And the addressee feels obliged to respond with another card. Thus makes also the US postal service stay in business.
So, it all comes to the numbers, at the end of the day.
Happy St. Valentine!
St. Patrick is not a holiday created in the US mainly. It’s Ireland’s patron saint day and not a Hallmark holiday (people rarely send cards to mark it). If it is celebrated in the US it’s because the Irish immigrants brought it here with them.