An Array of Holidays

Happy Administrative Professionals Day®, everyone! Yes, I know that just about everyone who regularly reads this is not an administrative professional. Heck, I might as well say none of you are. Just like Waitangi Day, I give you this greeting because of the calendar hanging in my kitchen.

Why did this holiday in particular catch my attention? Simple: it's a registered trademark. In fact, the publishers of the calendar hanging in my kitchen went so far as to put the following notice at the bottom of the April page:

Administrative Professionals Day is a registered trademark of the
International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP).

Honestly. Who decides to trademark a holiday, and why? I asked one of my friends this very important question, and the best she could come up with was that they did it "because no one had anything better to do and they were on crack," which is her answer for just about anything.

Feeling relieved by this definitive answer from a credible source, I decided to compare Administrative Professionals Day® to Christmas™, or something like that. I know that's a bit sacrilegious, but this just shows how ridiculous it is. I guess it has to do with the marketing.

Nevertheless, we should honor our administrative professionals today. While they don't necessarily need a trademarked holiday, they do deserve a little recognition, and if a trademarked holiday is what it takes, so be it. As such, I sent this to all the administrative professionals at my school, plus the librarian (why not?). So, if you're reading this, I appreciate you.

But that's not all. You see, I told one of my other friends that I would be posting today and I gave her a little hint. She immediately started guessing other holidays that are today that I could have chosen to write about.

Apparently today is Hug a Friend Day and National Static Cling Day. She also told me that it is National Bird Day, but further research proved that to be on 05 January. Oh, well. Mark your calendars for next year!

More importantly, it's National Pretzel Day, which means I'm going to give a bag of pretzels to someone random. Perhaps I should give pretzels to the administrative professionals, too...

It also is Hug an Australian Day, which is a shame, because we had our Australian foriegn exchange student last year. If only I'd known sooner...

Well, we have quite the array of holidays for today. But, of course, that's the case every day, and most of them are for pure profit. Oh, well.

Just stay tuned, because I have plans for declaring my own unofficial holiday in August. Of course, you'll hear about it in July (you've got to have some prep time). Until then, happy whatever-today-is!