This year Valentine’s Day lands on a Wednesday. There will most definitely be millions of people who will be celebrating the special holiday with family, friends and significant others. And of course these people will be spending a lot of money on gifts. Over the past few years people have had to pay more and more for the same things they have bought in past years.
When people think about gifts for Valentine’s Day they might think of items such as candy, flowers, cards, gift cards, clothes, dinners, date nights, jewelry or maybe even booking a hotel. Celebrating Valentine’s day has always been a day where a great amount of money is spent on many gifts. Inarguably the top items bought on Valentine’s Day are candies and chocolates. According to The Nasdaq Composite in 2023 the top gifts were candies followed by greeting cards, flowers and jewelry. All of these gifts and their prices could add up to a very high cost. For example a heart shaped box of chocolates costs around $10 to $20, and the average cost for a nicely put together bouquet of flowers could range anywhere from $20 to over $200. Altogether the price for just a box of chocolates along with a bouquet of flowers might range from $50 to $250 or more, and of course another gift that many people are very familiar with is a stuffed animal in valentine colors or with a heart design representing Valentine’s day. This illustrates that eventually all of these prices add up and people start spending so much money to illustrate their love for their loved ones.
According to Ms.Cobbs her husband will spend up to $200 this year on Valentine’s Day on gifts. Dr. Steitz spends around $125 to $1000 on Valentine’s Day for his wife if he wants to go all out for her.
When a person really thinks about it, many companies that create popular products bought on Valentine’s Day such as flower companies like UrbanStems. These companies will make billions of dollars during the few weeks before the special holiday because even if they say they’ll have a holiday sale the prices are always extremely expensive and might not even seem like they are on sale.
People will buy more than just flowers and chocolates which means even more money will be spent. For example many elementary schools will host Valentines parties for students and buy things such as small treats like candies, cookies, drinks, and give out little gifts like Valentine- themed pencils or erasers and little toys which can cost well over $300 for the whole school.
Although I do think Valentine’s Day is an amazing holiday, I do also believe that the pricing on resources seems a bit absurd, especially because gifts like flowers, candies, or chocolate will eventually end up in the trash. Flowers will die and a box of chocolates is not infinite so that will run out. Valetine’s Days seems to be a day all about taking money from the consumer and making sure companies stay rich.
