How consumerism stole Valentine’s Day
Back to Topic
Click to Print
Useful Websites
Glossary Term Selection
By Dr. Sophie King-Hill, Senior Fellow in the Health Services Management Centre (HSMC), University of Birmingham
Valentine’s Day is upon us, and with it, many of us are buying gifts and cards for others to proclaim our love, care and affection for them. On face value, this seems like an innocent and pleasant thing to do. But once we start looking beneath the surface then the concept of Valentine’s Day can appear more sinister.
Valentine’s Day is a social construct. This means it doesn’t exist outside of human perception. Now this doesn’t mean that the roses, hearts, cards, gifts and gender-based advertisements are a figment of your imagination. What this means is that without the influence of human socialisation, the day is not an objective reality of its own.
The origins of Valentine’s Day are somewhat hazy. With depictions of Cupid, the god of love from ancient mythology, often representing this day. There are also some links to martyred Christian saints named Valentine. It is als...
Want to see the rest of this article?
Would you like to see the rest of this article and all the other benefits that Issues Online can provide with?
- Useful related articles
- Video and multimedia references
- Statistical information and reference material
- Glossary of terms
- Key Facts and figures
- Related assignments
- Resource material and websites
