Holidays of Bookishness and Geekery

Hey'a, everyone! In case you missed it, yesterday was National Book-Buying Day, and as a result of my and my sister's celebrations, I am now the proud owner of Exiles, Reaper Reborn, The Dark Lord of Derkholm, and Lord of Chaos. If you missed the holiday- well, today's International Literacy Day, so I'd say you've still a pretty good excuse to celebrate by adding another book to your shelves. (Or by curling up with a book before bed; that's an option too, and probably a more likely one at this hour.) Actually, September's a pretty good month for bookish, geeky, and fandom-related holidays. Besides the two I already mentioned, you have the first of September (recognized by Harry Potter fans as the first day of Hogwarts), Unification Day on the 20th for the Firefly fans, and, of course, Tolkien Day or Bilbo and Frodo's birthday on the 22nd! September's not the only month with awesome-but-obscure holidays related to fandoms, books, or geekery, though; I have a whole calendar of these. And today, I thought I'd share some of my favorites.

Holidays of Bookishness and Geekery

1. February 26: Tell a Fairy Tale Day. More bookish than geekish, but this is still a fun holiday. Reread your favorite fairy tale (or fairy tale retelling), watch a movie based on a fairy tale, or, if you're a writer, maybe this would be a good day to start your own fairy tale retelling! I haven't celebrated this one myself, since I just recently discovered it, but I plan to next year!

2. March 25: Gondorian New Year. This holiday is also known as Tolkien Reading Day. It recognizes the date on which the One Ring was destroyed, Sauron was overthrown, and the Fourth Age began. Like September 22, it's an excellent day to read Tolkien's books, watch The Lord of the Rings, eat like a hobbit, quote Gandalf's "Good morning" speech (or any other line from the books or movies that happens to be relevant), and generally be dramatic. Or, if you wanted to focus more on the fact that it is the first day of the Gondorian year, you could borrow from other traditional new year celebrations- though you might have to do that the day before; I'm not sure.
 

3. May 25: Geek Pride Day. This holiday combines two celebrations from other books. Fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy celebrate Towel Day, because that's a thing. Actually, yeah, I get it; that was one of the funnier bits of the book. And for the fantasy-lovers, we have the Glorious Revolution of Ankh-Morpork in Discworld. I . . . actually haven't gotten to that book yet. Maybe by May I'll be caught up enough with the other sub-series that I can celebrate by reading Night Watch at last.
 

4. November 29: C.S. Lewis's Birthday. The summer is surprisingly lacking in geek, fandom, and bookworm holidays, y'all. I don't know why. In any case, Lewis's birthday is certainly worth celebrating, especially since Tolkien's already got two holidays all to himself. This would be an excellent day to reread your favorite book in The Chronicles of Narnia or the Space Trilogy- or, if you feel like nonfiction, to read one of Lewis's nonfiction books. Which I end up reading will probably depend on what I need to accomplish for my class on Lewis's works . . . which, unfortunately, meets the day before his birthday, not on it. Oh well.
 

5. December 8: Act Like a Time Traveler Day. I've known about this day for a while, but I've never had a chance to celebrate, mostly because it's no fun if you can't actually go anywhere to pretend. I might try to do something this year, though- perhaps not for the whole day, but for part of it. It'll be the week before my final exams, so I'll either be terribly stressed (and glad of a distraction) or one of the least stressed and busy people on campus (and therefore a bit bored and more inclined to go out and act somewhat ridiculous).

Do you celebrate any fandom-related holidays? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)