The Man

Is no holiday safe? Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Halloween – they all have become over run by corporations and their gimmicks. Even Oreo has come out with a Spring Time cookie, complete with green frosting that stains your entire mouth green (just ask my Grandpa). But is this such a bad thing? Take Earth Day, for instance. It is the newest of the holidays to join the ranks of the bigger ones as being an excuse to sell a product, and I have a mixed reaction about it. On one hand, companies are stretching their “earth-friendliness.” In her article At 40, Earth Day Is Now Big Business, Leslie Kaufman of the New York Times sites that, “For this year’s celebration, Bahama Umbrella is advertising a specially designed umbrella, with a drain so that water “can be stored, reused and recycled”(para 3). On the other hand, I can see the advantages of having a holiday be a reason to sell a product – awareness. Leslie states that “…many corporations say that it is often the business community that now leads the way in environmental innovation — and they want to get their customers interested” (Kaufman para 14). And who among you can disagree? It may be sad that no holiday, even hippy rooted Earth Day, is safe from “the man,” but getting people aware of our Earth’s problems is how we can eventually solve them.