Parent's Day

I know that there are days to honor our parents in American culture and they are mother’s day and father’s day. In Korea, there is a parent’s day. It is a day like combined mother’s day and father’s day. It is on May 8 every year. I don’t know whether Americans give carnations to their parents, but I certainly know that we do. We can give it as bouquet of real flower contained in basket, or corsage, which is made with colored paper. I don’t know why, but we usually give our parents red carnations. We also give hand-written letters to express our feeling of thank and respect. Though parent’s day is not national holiday or something, it is an important day to parents and their children.

However, now parents became to expect nothing in parents day. No, I should say that parent’s day ‘was’ an important day, because nowadays value of parents are lowered in Korean society. Many parents are devoting or sacrificing themselves to raise their children, but I think many of their children are taking that for granted and don’t respecting their parents anymore.

I can barely see people who are trying to do something to celebrate parent’s day these days. Of course, there are plenty of children caring of parent’s day, especially elementary school students. It is not because they are respecting their parents specially, but because it is their homework. They make corsages, write letters, and make coupons (they are free coupons saying that if their parents give them those coupons, they will do chores or massage their parent’s shoulder and back.) during the art classes.

After I realized the reality, I was sad when I became to think of my attitude to parent’s day. I didn’t anything to celebrate parent’s day, too. Somehow, my parents don’t like to have letters and real carnations. They say that letters are too formal and real carnations get wither and finally die so they should throw them out soon. They are expecting us to do chores, or give them little gift. We have been having a whole new parent’s day tradition! Last parent’s day, I gave them 3 pairs of socks and one year before the day, I gave them underwear, and one year before the day…etc. I hate to explain myself, but I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT SHOULD I GIVE THEM with little money! In addition, their birthdays are in May, too, so, I decided to do the dishes as usual and give them wonderful birthday presents in their birthday. And I felt sad again because I was justifying my ill-treatment to my parents in parent’s day, doing nothing in this special day! I wish I could afford to whatever they want to have. And of course, I wish my parents notice that I’m not disrespecting them.