When I was growing up, the calendar was marked with all the religious and national holidays, which was fine and easy to follow, especially with birthdays scattered among them. It was a way of keeping track of the passing months and gave me something to look forward to, especially since Mommy was always keen on decorating for some occasion or the other. The exception to these holidays were the invented ones such as Valentine´s Day, Mother´s Day, and Father´s Day, but that was about it. In the last ten years, however, there has been a plethora of commemorative or recognition days (for lack of a better term) that I have no idea why we even need to declare them.
Here is a list of annual international days declared by the UN that are observed in most countries, and the list is staggering. Some of them make sense, but others like World Bee Day (May 20), World Tuna Day (May 2), or even International Asteroid Day (June 30) fail to tickle my fancy! Today, February 21, for example, is World Mother Language Day, which probably explains why I am babbling about it to begin with.
As I dug deeper into these strange calendars, I found an even more bizarre list: Feb. 21 is also Sticky Bun Day, which is not too bad, but yesterday Feb 20 was really off the handle: Handcuff Day, Introduce A Girl to Engineering Day, Cheery Pie Day, Muffin Day. I missed Tug-of-war Day on Feb. 19, which was also Chocolate Mint Day. Dang it!
On the other hand, tomorrow Feb. 22 will be World Thinking Day (oh, because we don´t do that the other 364 days of the year???), Single Tasking Day, and – are you ready for this? Bake A Sweet Potato Day.
Sunday, Feb. 23 is important to me because it is my father´s birthday, and I will say a prayer and remember him fondly, but I will definitely not be observing International Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day, not just because I think it is a ridiculous concept, but because it would be high treason against my four-legged feline daughters.
Come on people, have we slid that far down the ladder in social intelligence that we need Cheeseball Day on April 17th? Click here for one of the weird calendars and join me in shaking your head.
PS: this entire entry was inspired by the flood of pangolin photographs on Instagram celebrating World Pangolin Day…
FrogDiva Thoughts 