On what grounds do you claim that they are in any way "unwitting"?

I was basing this on, amongst other things, on the Three Levels of Folklore postulated by Gerald Warshaver in which Level 1 consists of those customs and practices where the participants are innocent of the very concept of folklore. There is much of this in the ideas of meaning in folklore which proliferates throughout much of the last century even to the present day with the purity of participation defining the degree of what may be considered authentic, traditional or otherwise.