From National Pizza Day to National Puppy Day: Why so many national days have filled the calendar

If you’re intuitive feeling peckish for a salty handle, you’ve got an pardon to luxuriate: apr 26 is National Pretzel Day.

It’s also National Help a Horse Day, National Pet Parents Day, National Richter Scale Day, National Dissertation Day, and more. These are just some of over 3,000 special days, weeks and months declared by Mandan, N.D., company National Day Calendar that are celebrated worldwide. 

National Day Calendar, which was founded in 2013, gets over 30,000 applications annually for new special days, weeks or months. Last year, its committee of four approved fewer than 20, says Marlo Anderson, National Day Calendar’s founder.

“It's a tough litmus test,” Anderson told Cost of Living. “And it should be tough, right? I mean, this is a very special thing.”

The days that make the cut pay a one-time fee, but live on the National Day Calendar forever.

Anderson says "iconic" corporate brands that want their products attached to a day of the calendar typically get through easily, as opposed to applications that represent fads, such as National Goat Yoga Day.

“You have to understand that national days live 30, 50, 100 years from now." he said. "In my opinion, anyway, they can't be kind of a faddish type of thing.”

With everything from National Hangover Day to National Fresh Breath Day, it’s inevitable that each day will have detractors and celebrants. It’s the latter that companies, non-profits and other institutions are banking on when they apply to get a day (or week, or month) on the digital and physical National Day Calendar. But if every day is special in a half-dozen different ways, is any day truly special?

It’s a question Alberta Sen. Paula Simons has often considered, even before her career as a legislator.

“I hated, as a columnist for the Edmonton Journal, when somebody would come to me and say ‘Oh, you have to write a column because it’s national something day, week, month,’” she said.

Now, Simons votes on legislation to establish national days, weeks, and months in Canada, such as National Seniors Day (Oct. 1) or Kindness Week (third week of February.) These bills often start in the Senate, but must be passed by both houses of Parliament and receive royal assent.

Though she’s never voted against a proposed national day, she’s also sworn never to sponsor legislation to establish one.

“I don’t like to be the day Grinch, or the day curmudgeon, or the day Scrooge,” she said.

“But I do think sometimes that the currency of this is to attract public attention, and if there are so many, you can’t pay attention to each of them.”

There’s a group that’s paying particularly close attention, according to a marketing expert — social media-savvy younger consumers.

Nicole Rourke, a professor of marketing at St. Clair College in Windsor, Ont., saw it first-hand when her daughter’s university roommates got pizza for $3.14 on Pi Day. She says there can be benefits to consumers — as long as they can keep track of all the days.

“Gen Zs, the digital natives that we kind of laugh about? They have kind of embraced this,” Rourke said.

One of the reasons, she says, is that national days stand out against the news cycle and deluge of other marketing that consumers, particularly young people, are exposed to. 

“There’s so much negative news that when you hear that it’s National Lemon Chiffon Cake Day, you can’t help but smile,” she said.

Another is the effectiveness of national days on social media, which has given brands an easy way to reach younger audiences.

“Anything that can cut through the clutter and stay relevant with any of these target audiences … [it’s] always a good thing to connect your brand with the younger generation.”

But there can be drawbacks, Rourke added. Taking advantage of national day deals could involve divulging more personal data to businesses.

“If you celebrate every national day, you are probably going to start getting bombarded with promotions,” she said.

Greta Mascaroni found another benefit to national days besides deals and laughs — making sure colleagues knew where her office was.

About three years ago Mascaroni, a supply chain and equipment co-ordinator at Markham Stouffville Hospital in Markham, Ont., moved into an office that was next to a dirty linen room and a patient bathroom. It meant that people holding dirty laundry, and holding in their bodily functions, would often mistakenly wander into her office.

But a whiteboard, a marker and five minutes of pre-work research set her office door apart.

“It just came to be that everybody really liked to come by the office just to see what national day it was,” Mascaroni said. 

She kept the featured days light and relatable, given the nature of her workplace.

“There’s also patients across from my office that are recovering or pre-surgery,” she said. “So they would see the national days, and it would just kind of spark a conversation, and maybe put them at a little bit of an ease with whomever they were talking to at the time.”

Anderson saw how a national day can bring people together in celebration on National Pizza Day (Feb. 9) a few years ago in Los Angeles. To mark the occasion, he and some acquaintances wanted to grab a slice at a local pizza place during its off-hours, only to encounter a long wait and a frazzled staff member.

“She looks right at me and she’s like, ‘We can’t get you a table until 9 p.m. You know it’s Pizza Day, right?’”

Anderson did, in fact, know.

“It’s a reminder for people to get together, and that’s what we’re all about,” he said.

Interviews produced by Danielle Nerman

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