BY STEPH SMITH
Do you know what international or national day your birthday falls on?
Conestoga College students were asked if they could answer this question, and when they couldn’t, they received some pretty interesting answers.
A national day, as defined by Wikipedia, is a designated date where celebrations take place marking the nationhood of a country.
Oftentimes, national days are also referred to as a national holiday depending on the country that celebrates it. Holidays usually mean that people, such as workers, students, teachers and government officials, have the day off.
However, the majority of the list is days that celebrate a particular food, object, place, saying or way of life. Some of them seem completely made up or ridiculous, such as the Feast of Fabulous Wild Men Day (Jan. 12) and International Moment of Frustration Scream Day (Oct. 12).
Though some of these national days are a little, or very, obscure, they are “all genuine national days somewhere in the world,” according to studentbeans.com, the website that hosts the list of days which has been floating around social media such as Facebook and Tumblr.
The list doesn’t include actual holidays that are currently recognized around the world such as Christmas or Thanksgiving.
“It’s Martin Luther King’s birthday, but it doesn’t even include that? Jan. 15 is just Hat Day,” said Aly Smith, a first-year protection/security investigation (PSI) student.
Other students, such as David Ruxton, were eager to find out what day their birthday shared.
Ruxton, a first-year PSI student, couldn’t have had a better national day fall on his birthday, April 20.
“National Look-a-Like Day? That’s perfect! I have a twin, for real,” Ruxton said.
Some students would have preferred to have shared their birthday with a different day.
Corinne Edwards, a third-year computer programming student, thought the days her birthday fell on, Hobbit Day and Dear Diary Day, were weird.
“Aw, yours is nice!” said Edwards to Sara Dutton, a fellow classmate, whose birthday falls on National Be An Angel Day.
Spencer Gough, a second-year radio broadcast student, has a birthday which falls on Buy-A-Musical-Instrument Day. His friend, Mike Balch, who is in the same program and year as Gough, said he was going to buy him a kazoo this year to celebrate.
Balch, however, wished that he shared Gough’s birthday (June 24) after finding out it falls on the very obscure Museum Comes to Life Day.
According to an explanation on the website giftypedia.com, Museum Comes to Life Day is a day to celebrate museums and the hard-working people who bring the past to life.
So, in addition to your birthday, you can celebrate a national or international day as well. It’s an added bonus if your birthday falls on something good, like desserts or ice cream, but it could still be just as good if it happens to be something weird.
To see the full list of international and national days, or to see which ones fall on you or your friends’ birthday, visit this TinyURL link to the studentbeans.com page: http://tinyurl.com/cr20b6h.
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