Oct. 15 …. the “Sweetest Day” of the Year

So here it is October and most of us are thinking that the next big the special occasion (of sorts) is Halloween. Well little do we know that right smack in the middle of this month is a day more sugary than a pillow case full of candy corn. That’s right, Saturday Oct. 15, 2011, is “Sweetest Day”! Never heard of it you say? That’s because it’s a made up holiday primarily celebrated in the Great Lakes region.

The story goes that Sweetest Day began in 1921 as a promotion concocted by candy maker (big surprise) C.C. Hartzell and his very own posse of 12 confectioners known as …ready… The Sweetest Day of the Year Committee. It’s easy to remember when it comes because it’s always celebrated on the 3^rd Saturday in October.

On the very first Sweetest Day, the Committee distributed over 20,000 boxes of candy to newsboys, orphans, old folks, and the poor in Cleveland Ohio. Legend has it they were assisted by some of the biggest movie stars of the day including Theda Bara and Ann Pennington (okay I think I might have heard of Ann).

So WHY should we pay any mind to this sugar coated obscure made up by the candy makers occasion when Halloween is just around the corner? Well that question is best answered in the full page introduction for Sweetest Day that appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper on Sunday October 8, 1922. It went like this…

“The Sweetest Day” of the Year is the 3^rd Saturday of this month.

Love is always the dominant motif in a successful life. Most of us have love in our hearts, but too often it remains there, never manifesting itself before those who inspire it.

Perhaps the business of living in this day and age when every moment requires energy and exertion precludes the constant exhibition of sentiment. There are those of us who have mothers and fathers back there in the little home town or here for that matter. Life itself would not be too much of a sacrifice in their behalf if necessary, yet how few times do we really show them that we care.

And remember your glorious courtship when all the world seemed in tune. Years will never dim the sacred memory of those golden days. Your wife remembers the hundreds of little attentions you showered upon her then. Little things perhaps, but maybe she sighs to herself every once in a while, and yearns – and hopes.

The Sweetest Day in the year came into being because the founders recognized the eternal tendency of men and women to become so engaged in the rush and whirl of life and forget the finer, more appealing things.