By Maria Papagiannopoulou,
A day set aside in several nations to honour friendship is called Friendship Day (also known as the International Friendship Day or Friend’s Day). The greeting card industry was responsible for its initial promotion, but social networking sites have revealed resurgence in interest in Friendship Day, particularly in India, Bangladesh, and Malaysia. Social media, mobile phones, and digital communication have all helped to make the tradition more common. The custom of designating a day in honour of friends is said to have started in the United States in 1935, according to those who support the holiday in South Asia.
In Paraguay, Joyce Hall initially proposed Friendship Day in 1958. It was a holiday in which friendships were honoured through a worldwide celebration. Due to desynchronization in the United States, the celebration’s original date of 2 August has been changed to 7 August.
In 1998, Nane Annan appointed Winnie the Pooh as the global ambassador of friendship at the UN in honour of Friendship Day. The U.N. Department of Public Information and Disney Enterprises jointly sponsored the event, which Kathy Lee Gifford co-hosted.
Dr. Ramon Artemio Bracho first suggested the idea of a Global Friendship Day on July 20, 1958, at dinner with friends in Puerto Pinasco, a village on the River Paraguay located about 200 miles (320 km) north of Asuncion, Paraguay.
The World Friendship Crusade was established at that gathering. A charity called the World Friendship Crusade advocates for friendship and community among all people, regardless of race, colour, or religion. Since then, 30 July has been enthusiastically observed in Paraguay as Friendship Day every year and has also been embraced by a number of other nations.
The World Friendship Crusade has been urging the UN to declare July 30 as World Friendship Day for a number of years; finally, in 2011, the UN General Assembly decided to do so. They then invited all of their member states to observe the International Day of Friendship in accordance with their local, national, and regional cultures, including through education and public awareness.
On July 14, there are festivities in Ecuador and Venezuela. This holiday is observed every year on July 19 in Pakistan. On July 23, Bolivians commemorate Friendship Day. The 30th of July is Friendship Day in Nepal.
Giving presents to close friends and family members takes place in Paraguay on July 29. Bars and clubs are common places for celebrations. The game of the Invisible Friend (Amigo Invisible), in which players discreetly choose one another from a pile of small sheets of paper with names, is regarded as a tradition. On July 30, the person whose name was chosen is presented with a gift.
In Asunción and other cities in Paraguay, this tradition is observed in both companies and schools.
On the first Saturday in July, Peru has celebrated “El dia del Amigo” since 2009. The beer company Pilsen Callao suggested the date. The goal was to distinguish between actual friendship and the romantic love celebrated on Valentine’s Day.
Friendship Day (also known as Friends Day) is observed on July 20 in Argentina, Brazil, Spain, and Uruguay. It serves as a justification for a cordial get-together and welcoming of both new and old friends.
Enrique Ernesto Febbraro, an Argentinian dentist and Rotarian who came up with the concept to observe International Friendship Day as a unifying gesture of friendship between nations and was inspired by the day Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, is to thank for its popularity. While the Apollo 11 was still in space, he sent 1,000 letters to Rotary Club contacts around the world. Of those letters, 700 received responses, which served as the impetus for the celebration.
Friend’s Day has become a huge cultural phenomenon in Argentina. For instance, in the cities of Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Córdoba, and Rosario in 2005, a breakdown of the mobile phone network caused by the volume of well-wishers was comparable to the one that occurred in 2004 on Christmas and New Year’s Day.
Friendship Day is observed in India on the first Sunday of August. In the early 1990s, the festival became extremely popular among teenagers and young people thanks to Bollywood movies. Friends celebrate their friendship by tying a Friendship band (a ribbon band) to one other. On that day, college students typically don white t-shirts on which they have written the names of their friends or inspirational phrases.
References
- International Day of Friendship. un.org. Available here
