fun, strange holidays grouped by month

Pink Flamingo Day

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pink flamingo day

Today is Pink Flamingo Day, founded on June 23, 2007, by Mayor Dean Mazzarella of Leominster, Massachusetts, to honor the 50th birthday of the iconic lawn ornaments that have happily survived despite homeowners’ associations’ attempts to hunt them to extinction.

In 1957, art school graduate Don Featherstone was tasked with creating a pink flamingo for his employer, Union Products, located in Leominster, often referred to as the “Plastics Capital of the World.” Using National Geographic photographs as reference material, Featherstone sculpted two pink flamingos. They were meant to be a festive way for homeowners to personalize the identical yards of postwar suburban subdivisions.

Featherstone would go on to create 750 items for Union Products and become the company’s president in 1996. His flamingos were popular but eventually became a target of derision, a symbol of tackiness. Many fans remain loyal in defiance of their neighbors’ plot to eradicate them under the guise of lawn beautification. (If we’re going there, let’s talk about how many seasonal flags a community needs.)

No history would be complete without mentioning John Waters and his 1972 movie, Pink Flamingos. An enthusiastic proponent of all things kitsch, camp, and lowbrow, Waters helped bring the decoration to a new audience, one that reveled in irony. It’s clear that pink flamingos continued to sell. So many knockoffs were produced that in the late 1980s, Featherstone added his signature to the molds to identify the real thing.

Featherstone retired in 2000. Union Products closed its doors in 2006, after producing more than 20 million flamingos. Cado Company in Fitchburg, MA, bought the rights a few years later and now manufactures birds with the inventor’s signature on the bottom.

Featherstone passed away on June 22, 2015, at the age of 79, one day shy of the 28th annual Pink Flamingo Day. Claude Chapdelaine, VP at Cado, told Boston Magazine,: “He was just a really nice guy, never took himself seriously. Throughout his career, he made all kinds of lawn and garden ornaments. A lot of people referred to them as being kind of kitsch. He said, ‘You know what? It makes people laugh and brings a smile to everybody’s face’ and that’s what he liked.”

Bring a smile to everybody’s face today by planting some pink flamingos of your own. If you have some already, display them prominently: no hiding them behind shrubbery allowed! Even if the closest thing you have to a yard is a plant on your windowsill, there’s always room for these Lilliputian versions.

pink flamingos planted in houseplant

Happy Pink Flamingo Day!

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National Onion Ring Day

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national onion ring dayToday is National Onion Ring Day.

The first known iteration of the onion ring appeared in the 1802 cookbook “The Art of Cookery.” The recipe for Fried Onions with Parmesan Cheese called for onions to be sliced into 1/2 inch rings, dredged in a batter of flour, cream, salt, pepper, and Parmesan cheese, then deep-fried in boiling lard.

For recipes and more information about onions than you might ever want to know, read the National Onion Association’s blog, written by the mononymous “Onionista.” There you will find a post describing how to cut onions in a way that will elicit fewer tears.

Have a happy, dry-eyed National Onion Ring Day!

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Polar Bear Swim

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June 21, 2025, marks the 51st annual Polar Bear Swim, celebrated in Nome, Alaska, on the Saturday closest to the summer solstice (on June 21). Unlike many places in the USA’s lower 48 states (and Hawaii, of course), where taking a dip in the middle of June is a pleasure, splashing in the Bering Sea is not for the faint of heart. (Just ask anyone who’s survived falling overboard on Deadliest Catch.)

polar bear swim nome

The water is barely above freezing. In fact, in some years, the swim has been rescheduled because the ice hasn’t broken up enough to allow participants to wade in from Nome’s East End Beach. (Rush in and rush right back out is a more accurate description.)

The Polar Bear Swim is part of the Midnight Sun Festival, held in Nome during the summer solstice when the sun shines for 22 hours a day. Other festival events include the Gold Dust Dash, a four-mile foot race to win a gold nugget; the Midnight Sun Parade, with prizes for the best floats; and the Midnight Sun Annual Bank Robbery, a mock holdup of Wells Fargo Bank at high noon by gunslinging outlaws.

At 2 pm, roughly 100 people are expected to brave the icy water in bikinis, Speedos, and various costumes. A bonfire will be built on the beach, allowing everyone to warm up quickly after leaving the water. All swimmers will receive a certificate of achievement and join the ranks of those who have taken the plunge since 1975.

Whether it sounds like a rollicking good time or makes you want to dive under an electric blanket, there’s no doubt Nome’s Polar Bear Swim is a wacky holiday to rival Canada’s International Hair Freezing Day.

So jump in and tell your friends, “Come on in, the water’s f-f-f-freezing!”

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American Eagle Day

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Today is American Eagle Day. On June 20, 1american eagle day782, the American eagle, also known as the bald eagle, was chosen to grace the Great Seal of the United States of America.

Two centuries later, President Ronald Reagan declared June 20, 1982, National Bald Eagle Day and designated 1982 as the Bicentennial Year of the American Bald Eagle. But the observance was a one-time occurrence.

On June 20, 1995, President Bill Clinton and Tennessee Governor Don Sundquist each proclaimed the first official American Eagle Day. Since then, governors from 47 states have followed suit, according to the American Eagle Foundation, an organization working to make American Eagle Day a national holiday.

When the Founding Fathers adopted the bald eagle as our national symbol, there were approximately 25,000 to 75,000 of them in the lower 48 states, according to the Smithsonian. In 1963, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) reported that there were only 487 breeding pairs left, due to hunting, habitat destruction, lead poisoning, and the catastrophic effects of DDT, a common pesticide.

american eagle day

DDT wasn’t lethal to adult eagles, but it accumulated rapidly in their tissues because their diet consisted of prey that was also contaminated with the pesticide, a process known as biomagnification.

High levels of DDT interfered with calcium absorption, rendering the birds sterile or unable to lay healthy eggs. Shells became so thin that they cracked under the weight of a brooding adult.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) restricted the use of DDT in 1972; six years later, the bald eagle was added to the Endangered Species List. Slowly, the population increased; the species’ status was downgraded to “threatened” in 1995. In 2006, USFWS reported 9,789 mating pairs in the lower 48 states and delisted the bald eagle the following year.

If you haven’t seen one up close, check out this list of 13 National Wildlife Refuges that are great places to spot bald eagles. If you have a lot of patience and bandwidth, watch a live nest cam.  Most of the time, nothing much happens, but every once in a while, you’ll get a glimpse of something interesting. It’s a little like the 24/7 stream of Big Brother but without the tears and subterfuge.

Happy American Eagle Day!

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