The Commercialization of the Places of Christian Pilgrimages

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The Commercialization of the Places of Christian Pilgrimages

These days money is everything, and the second someone sees the

opportunity to make a bit of cash they jump at the chance. For

example, places of pilgrimage are visited by many of the millions of

Christians in the whole world, yearly, and never does the number of

these pilgrims fall drastically; giving merchants customers

continuously. In this essay you will hear of just exactly how these

merchants affect the value of Pilgrimage for Pilgrims.

To me, there are two main views here to be looked at. There is the

view of the people, who are affected, and the people who aren’t

affected. So firstly lets talk about those of whom are affected. The

main reason that people go on pilgrimage is so that they can be closer

to God. If we were to take Fatima as an example, then I would most

definitely assure you that on the way, the streets are very very

congested. So, many people decide that instead of driving the rest of

the way, that they will walk there instead. Doing as such is fine, but

the local merchants (a lot) can see this, and take advantage. They set

up their stalls across the street and stuff goods in your face

literally. I mean even if they don’t speak the same language as you,

they’ll still persist and figure out some way of selling you their

goods. And most of the time their goods are quite, well… rubbish. To

some Christians this can get in the way of the real focus of actually

visiting the places of pilgrimage and taking the time to reflect. This

view shows that there is a problem with the commercialised side of

Pilgrimages.

Now onto the second point of view, of the people who aren’t really

affected by all the commercialised parts in Pilgrimage. People who

share such views still go on Pilgrimage but are not concerned with all

the merchandise. I mean, there are people who do purposely want to buy

some of this merchandise, but the important thing is that they don’t

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