Friend's Day / Friendship Day

Yesterday I've seen a lot of people from Brazil on my Twitter and Facebook wishing everybody a happy friend's day, or friendship day. I did not know it was such a day, and this morning I went on to Google about it (as I do with everything...), and I found out that, well, it wasn't, not exactly. Not here in the UK (or the Isle of Man), and not exactly in Brazil either. The same sort of thing happened on the 13th of April when everybody in Brazil was celebrating the International Kissing Day, when it wasn't. I wonder if this happens everywhere or if it is just a Brazilian thing.

Let me explain what I found out about these days. The International Friendship Day celebrations traditionally take place on the first Sunday of August, in many places in the world, a tradition that was promoted by the founder of Hallmark Cards back in 1919. Of course, there are other places in the world that celebrate a Friendship Day on another date, and that's absolutely fine. On the 27th of April 2011, though, the United Nations declared the 30th of July as International Day of Friendship, so take your pick with one of these two if you want to be international. 

In Argentina, on the other hand, the Friend's Day exists since 1968 and that is the 20th of July, a.k.a. yesterday, which is obviously why a lot of people in Brazil were celebrating it. That would be quite normal since Argentina is so close to Brazil, but, at least according to a document from the Brazilian Government, Friend's Day in Brazil is the 18th of April! But, hey, check this out, the same document says that the 20th of July is Friendship Day, so I guess that was ok.  But get your facts right, Brazilians from Twitter and Facebook! Yesterday wasn't Friend's Day, it was Friendship Day!

Now, to the International Kissing Day. It's "international", so one would assume that most of the world celebrates it in the same day, right? And that is the case for most of the world, where International Kissing Day is celebrated on the 6th of July, a tradition that started in the United Kingdom where that day was National Kissing Day at first, but in Brazil they celebrate the "International" Kissing Day on the 13th of April! I could not find any other references on the Internet for that day as a kissing day, so I guess it is not that international after all. What I suppose happened was that calling it "International Kissing Day" sounded better than just calling it "Kissing Day" and that spread on the internet among Brazilians so they think the 13th of April is indeed International Kissing Day. Go figure.

I know I am being picky and these days are not even official holidays or anything and were mostly created by greeting cards companies and other commercial reasons, but I find that Brazilians are often not very precise with these things and they (should I say "we"?) follow internet fads quite a lot. I don't really know why and I am not saying it's only a Brazilian thing but that's where I notice it, and being the geek that I am, things like that annoy me a little sometimes. So I rant about it here.