![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777216276_732_default.jpg\")
Marlo Anderson, the founder of National Day Calendar, said applications to establish new national days face a tough litmus test. (Marlo Anderson\/Submitted)<\/p>\nLISTEN | Why there are so many national days:<\/p>\n
Cost of Living5:14The never-ending list of National Days<\/p>\n
Does your calendar feel crammed? Maybe that’s because National Macaroon Day falls on the same day as National Egg Day. Every year, brands and businesses pay to create new national days. Why? Well, who doesn’t want to pay $3.14 for a slice of pizza on National Pi Day?<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re feeling peckish for a salty treat, you\u2019ve got an excuse to indulge: April 26 is National Pretzel Day.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u2019s founder.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a tough litmus test,\u201d Anderson told Cost of Living. \u201cAnd it should be tough, right? I mean, this is a very special thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The days that make the cut pay a one-time fee, but live on the National Day Calendar forever.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marlo Anderson, the founder of National Day Calendar, said applications to establish new national days face a tough litmus test. (Marlo Anderson\/Submitted)<\/p>\n
With everything from National Hangover Day to National Fresh Breath Day, it\u2019s inevitable that each day will have detractors and celebrants. It\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a question Alberta Sen. Paula Simons has often considered, even before her career as a legislator.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hated, as a columnist for the Edmonton Journal, when somebody would come to me and say \u2018Oh, you have to write a column because it\u2019s national something day, week, month,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Now, Simons votes on legislation to establish national days, weeks, and months in Canada, such as National Seniors Day<\/a> (Oct. 1) or Kindness Week<\/a> (third week of February.) These bills often start in the Senate, but must be passed by both houses of Parliament and receive royal assent.<\/p>\n Though she\u2019s never voted against a proposed national day, she\u2019s also sworn never to sponsor legislation to establish one.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t like to be the day Grinch, or the day curmudgeon, or the day Scrooge,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I do think sometimes that the currency of this is to attract public attention, and if there are so many, you can\u2019t pay attention to each of them.\u201d<\/p>\n National days effective marketing to Gen Z: prof<\/p>\n There\u2019s a group that\u2019s paying particularly close attention, according to a marketing expert \u2014 social media-savvy younger consumers.<\/p>\n Nicole Rourke, a professor of marketing at St. Clair College in Windsor, Ont., saw it first-hand when her daughter\u2019s university roommates got pizza for $3.14 on Pi Day. She says there can be benefits to consumers \u2014 as long as they can keep track of all the days.<\/p>\n \u201cGen Zs, the digital natives that we kind of laugh about? They have kind of embraced this,\u201d Rourke said.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s so much negative news that when you hear that it\u2019s National Lemon Chiffon Cake Day, you can\u2019t help but smile,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Another is the effectiveness of national days on social media, which has given brands an easy way to reach younger audiences.<\/p>\n \u201cAnything that can cut through the clutter and stay relevant with any of these target audiences \u2026 [it\u2019s] always a good thing to connect your brand with the younger generation.\u201d<\/p>\n But there can be drawbacks, Rourke added. Taking advantage of national day deals could involve divulging more personal data to businesses.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you celebrate every national day, you are probably going to start getting bombarded with promotions,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Celebrating together<\/p>\n Greta Mascaroni found another benefit to national days besides deals and laughs \u2014 making sure colleagues knew where her office was.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n But a whiteboard, a marker and five minutes of pre-work research set her office door apart.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just came to be that everybody really liked to come by the office just to see what national day it was,\u201d Mascaroni said.\u00a0<\/p>\n She kept the featured days light and relatable, given the nature of her workplace.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s also patients across from my office that are recovering or pre-surgery,\u201d she said. \u201cSo 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cShe looks right at me and she\u2019s like, \u2018We can\u2019t get you a table until 9 p.m. You know it\u2019s Pizza Day, right?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Anderson did, in fact, know.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a reminder for people to get together, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re all about,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LISTEN | Why there are so many national days: Cost of Living5:14The never-ending list of National Days Does…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-630023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Sen.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769336048_203_default.jpg\")
Sen. Paula Simons refuses to sponsor bills to establish new national days in Canada, but she doesn’t like to be the “day curmudgeon.” (Roger Cosman\/CBC)<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777216278_421_default.jpg\")
Greta Mascaroni stands in front of her office whiteboard on April 22, 2026. The Markham Stouffville Hospital supply chain and equipment co-ordinator started writing national days on the board to distinguish her office from the nearby bathroom and utility room. (Greta Mascaroni\/Submitted)<\/p>\n