Pepero Day

Tomorrow is November 11th, and that means Pepero Day – as I learned the afternoon of November 10th.

Basically on this day, young people will exchange Pepero sticks, which are literally crackers dipped in chocolate. They look exactly like Pocky. It’s basically the Korean equivalent. LotteMart says that 55% of their Pepero sales are during early November. Just saying.

The holiday is kind of like a Korean Valentine’s Day, but the country also celebrates Valentine’s Day, so I think it’s either one of two things:

1) An unimportant and meaningless holiday, like Columbus Day. Nothing religious or influential, it’s just an excuse for stores to have sales. School still goes on and people don’t gets drunk or have a parade. But to be fair, no one celebrates Columbus Day except the post office. By not delivering mail.

2) A secret plot by the manufacturers of Pepero products. It’s kind of genius if they can get a national holiday for just their product. It’d be like Nabisco having a Chips Ahoy Day or Coca-Cola having a Coke Zero Day. Wal-mart is probably the only store with enough money and power to lobby for their own national holiday, but their sales aren’t exactly hurting and I’m still not entirely sure of the fine print in their deal with whatever demon signed them.

Either way, while I’m totally okay with consumerism and passionate support from the government, I’m not buying anything. I’m saving my money for Big Mac Day.