Who Put Advertising in Charge of the Calendar?

I've said for years that an awful lot of these National Something Days look suspiciously like advertorials. There is apparently a special date for every snack, hobby, habit, household object and vaguely marketable human emotion. We are no longer simply being asked to enjoy a thing. We are being informed that the nation is celebrating it, usually by a company that happens to sell it.

The latest invitation arrived November 6, when RoC Skincare issued a press release announcing the sixth annual National Retinol Day, observed November 7. The release introduced the company's first chief dermatologist and promoted a new serum. Those may be perfectly legitimate business announcements, but what caught my attention was the ceremonial wrapper: National Retinol Day wasn't an existing public tradition that RoC had decided to join. RoC says it established the day itself in 2021.

Its original announcement makes the mechanism even clearer. In 2021, the company celebrated getting the date proclaimed through National Day Calendar, then offered retinol discounts, product samples and social-media giveaways. The calendar had acquired a holiday. The company had acquired a recurring reason to talk about retinol. Everyone knew what was being sold, but the sales pitch now came dressed as an annual observance.

This is where the language starts doing remarkable work. A product announcement is a product announcement. A promotional sale is a promotional sale. Put “National” in front of the subject and suddenly the same message feels like a cultural event you might have missed. The word suggests shared recognition, a little civic weight, perhaps even the distant involvement of somebody in Washington. Most people aren't going to stop scrolling long enough to investigate who declared National Retinol Day, or why.

In this case, the answer isn't Washington. National Day Calendar is a private company, not a government agency. Its website says so explicitly. It accepts proposed observances from individuals, nonprofits and businesses, reviews submissions and, if a proposal is approved, offers the applicant promotional packages. Applying is free; approved organizers select a package that can include media outreach, social amplification and branded proclamations. If the day already exists, a company can explore becoming its Official Sponsor, Official Product or Official Destination.

There is something beautifully revealing about a page that offers to make a cause, idea or brand into a national celebration and lists “increased product sales,” “market visibility” and “brand authority” among the benefits. It isn't a secret marketing scheme. It is a marketing service with a calendar attached. And because the date comes back every year, the resulting promotional opportunity can outlive the original campaign that produced it.

The most spectacular example may not be a day invented from scratch, but one that got moved. In 2024, Taco Bell worked with National Day Calendar to shift National Taco Day from October 4 to the first Tuesday in October. The company's reasoning was that Taco Day ought to land on Taco Tuesday. The registry agreed, and the change became the observance's new date on that calendar. The company announced the news with the kind of ceremonial language normally reserved for a major act of public administration.

Think about what happened there. A restaurant chain wanted a recurring promotional occasion to align with its preferred day of the week, and an organization maintaining an unofficial calendar changed the date. No federal holiday was altered. No presidential signature was necessary. Yet, to anyone who only saw the headline, a national holiday had apparently been rescheduled. That is an extraordinary amount of implied authority for a promotional partnership.

The idea of creating occasions to encourage people to do something, buy something or support something isn't new. Sweetest Day traces its roots to the candy business in Cleveland a century ago, though it also developed a tradition of giving small gifts and showing kindness. National Doughnut Day began with the Salvation Army in Chicago in 1938, honoring the volunteers who served doughnuts to soldiers during World War I and raising attention and funds for charitable work. Those histories matter because they show how different the motives behind similarly named celebrations can be.

There are also observances with actual governmental origins. In 1984, Congress designated National Ice Cream Month and a National Ice Cream Day for that year, and President Ronald Reagan issued a proclamation. The proclamation itself praised ice cream's contribution to jobs, dairy production and sales, so commerce was hardly absent from official celebration. But a presidential proclamation, a charity's commemorative tradition and a brand's calendar registration are three different things, even when they all appear in your feed under the same cheerful “National Day” label.

What has changed is the machinery that makes these occasions travel. An annual date gives a communications team a hook before it has any new information to communicate. A press release supplies the announcement. An expert offers a quote. A discount creates the call to action. A hashtag encourages participation. Search results and digital calendars give the occasion a place to live, while newsrooms and social accounts searching for something timely may supply the distribution. Next year, the process can begin again with “seventh annual” instead of “sixth annual,” which sounds more established simply because time has passed.

That isn't a cynical theory I had to invent. A November 2 article in Entrepreneur openly advised brands to create annual observances as a way to generate earned media, search visibility, partnerships and authority in a subject area. A July report from Licensing International likewise described national-day calendars as marketing platforms. Industry people are discussing this as an advertising strategy. The rest of us keep receiving it as a charming fact about what day it is.

And to be fair to the actual participants, people enjoy these things. There is nothing sinister about finding out it's National Doughnut Day and accepting a free doughnut. A silly observance can give friends a reason to joke, local businesses a reason to do something fun, or a nonprofit an opening to discuss a neglected issue. A made-up tradition can eventually become a real tradition if people find enough value in continuing it. The public is perfectly capable of adopting something without adopting the original company's motives.

The trouble begins when the framing skips the part about who created the occasion. “Today is National Retinol Day” sounds like a statement about the country. “A skincare company established National Retinol Day and is using it to introduce a new serum” is a statement about marketing. Both can be factually accurate, but they are not the same story. One repeats the campaign's premise; the other explains it.

That difference matters especially to journalism. A company is entitled to celebrate its own product and put out a release. A calendar business is entitled to sell publicity services. Neither is obligated to make the public-interest case for a newsroom. When an article treats the fact that an invented observance exists as evidence that the observance is newsworthy, the promotion has effectively written its own assignment. This is how advertorial thinking can slip into ordinary coverage without anyone having to buy an ad.

I'd rather see the creator's name in the first paragraph than another breathless invitation to “celebrate.” Tell me who started the day, when, why and what they are asking people to do. If the origin is a wartime charity, that's an interesting history. If the event has gathered its own community following, that's a cultural story. If the occasion was registered to help sell a serum, that's interesting too, but for entirely different reasons.

We don't have to stop enjoying the absurd calendar. I'll happily eat the doughnut, appreciate the taco deal and laugh at whatever household appliance is supposedly having its moment tomorrow. I just want to know whether I'm participating in a tradition or standing in the middle of a campaign. Somewhere between the two, advertisers discovered they didn't have to interrupt the calendar. They could become part of it.

The next time someone announces that America is celebrating National Whatever Day, the most useful question might not be how to observe it. It might be who decided we were celebrating in the first place.