Humans love celebrating things.

How else can you explain the cold war-esque proliferation of holidays in recent years? Chase’s Calendar of Events, the magna carta of calendering, clocks in at a svelte 752 pages (you’re on notice, Tolstoy). Holidays in July include Yellow Pig Day (July 17), Ugly Truck Day (July 20), and, of course, Take Your Pants For A Walk Day (July 27).  

It seems like just about everything has a holiday nowadays (see Rubber Eraser Day, April 15). Surely there’s room to celebrate something providing some real value to the world. Something which enables companies to operate and flourish. Something like, say, IT.  

What would it take to create a holiday to celebrate the IT department?  With this question in mind, I set out on a journey to illuminate the world of holiday creation.

The holiday explosion really begins over 25 years ago with a man named Thomas Roy. A long time reader of Chase’s Calendar of Events, Thomas noticed a form at the back of the book which allowed readers to submit new holidays. Armed with a sense of humor and some free time, Thomas submitted his first holiday: Northern Hemisphere Hoodie-Doo Day. Upon publication the subsequent year, his appetite for holiday creation became insatiable, eventually founding (and copyrighting) over 90 holidays.

A slew of Roy disciples rose up, creating holidays to suit their own preferences and agendas. Many of these new holidays find their roots in the corporate world, with companies looking to drum up awareness and sales (I’m looking at you, National Pretzel Day).

But what about IT? So it turns out IT has a holiday already. Well, kind of. Today, July 29th, is SysAdmin Appreciation Day. SysAdmin Appreciation Day is celebrated on the last friday of July and, according to http://sysadminday.com/, dates back to 1999. According to the site, proper SysAdmin Day observance includes such things as cake, ice cream, pizza, gifts, decorations & more. That certainly sounds like a recipe for a great IT holiday.  

But if a holiday falls in the forest and nobody’s around to hear it, does it really exist? Traffic estimates suggest the holiday has yet to take hold. Furthermore, while SysAdmins are great and indispensable, honoring them while ignoring other IT contributors is like the Academy Awards deciding to celebrate only the Best Supporting Actor. IT deserves something broader. Something more inclusive. And, for that matter, why can’t it last a whole week?

Following in the footsteps of Thomas Roy before me, I decided to forge my own trail rather than accept the holidays given to me. Thankfully, Chase’s makes it easy to add to their calendar with an online submission form.  After some internal debate we decided on, drumroll please, the fourth week of March as IT Appreciation Day. That time of year is delightfully void of contending holidays and just felt right.  

Alas, we missed the deadline for 2017 submissions, but come the week of March 25 – March 31 2018, let the festivities begin. Don’t worry, Samanage will make sure you know when the party is starting.