No, I don’t like ‘days’ dedicated to something.

• Women’s Day
• Kindness Day
• Mother’s Day
• Grandmothers’ Day
• Valentine’s Day, Lovers’ Day
• etc…

I don’t like them because they’re counterproductive.

There are nearly 500 global, international or national days listed each year, created to raise public awareness of various issues (social causes, health, the environment). The UN officially recognises more than 200 of them, but the calendar is constantly expanding, including both very serious days and more unusual themes.

The UN lists all these days in an impressive document

I hate the idea of setting aside a specific day on the calendar for a particular virtue, because it effectively makes it optional for the rest of the year.
Take International Women’s Day… or Valentine’s Day, that ‘compulsory’ commercial celebration designed to show you care about your wife. On days like these, we’re supposed to pay particular attention to women’s rights, make them happy, give them a present, take them out for dinner, plan a surprise…

But what about the other 364 days of the year? We can ignore her because we’ve done our good deed on the ‘right’ day. Careful! It’s still best not to forget her birthday, though. For some lucky husbands, it falls on the same day. That’s something, at least.

Except that’s not the case – you’ve also got to remember to be kind to your wife on 13 November! It’s Kindness Day!
Well, this one’s even worse. On 13 November, you HAVE to be kind to everyone: neighbours, office colleagues, children, motorists, rude people and grumpy people.
So does that mean for the remaining 364 days we can be a right pain to everyone?
Why do we need a notification on our phone to remind us to be civilised? It suggests a total failure of education and natural empathy.

Have you ever thought about the contrast between the ‘facade of a smile’ on 13 November and the everyday rudeness on the Underground or at work on 12 or 14 November?

Days like these often turn fundamental human values into marketing ploys or empty slogans.

But true kindness cannot be a compulsory exercise. Consequently, to combat this, I’ve decided that I’ll be kind every day of the year except… 13 November. On that day, don’t come near me because I’ll be rude to everyone.
On 13 November, don’t count on me to hold the door open for you or smile at you. Since the global calendar has decided to confine kindness to a 24-hour enclosure, I’ve decided to unleash my cynicism on that very day.

And there’s a plethora of silly days like that:

• World Compliment Day (1 March): the sincere admiration one feels for someone cannot be a task scheduled in an electronic diary.
• World Smile Day (first Friday in October): forcing a smile on a specific day is the height of social hypocrisy. I smile when I feel like smiling, so on that day I promise to pull a long face all day long.
• World Thank You Day (11 January): as if gratitude were an option you switch on once a year.
• World Listening Day (18 July): if we need a whole day to listen, it’s because on the other 364 days, all we do is listen to ourselves talking.
• World Forgiveness Day (18 September): the next time someone hurts me, physically or emotionally, and comes to apologise, I’ll reply, “Sorry, I can’t forgive you today; come back on 18 September.”

We give ourselves a clear conscience for 24 hours so we can forget to be human the rest of the time. It reminds me of those patronesses whose husbands exploited miners in the 19th century under appalling conditions. They’d come to pray for them on Sundays and make a substantial donation to the church to atone for their husbands’ sins!

Welcome to the resistance against virtue on demand.

We live in strange times when we need a smartphone notification to remind us to be human. Between ‘Tuna Day’ and ‘Compliment Day’, my diary looks like a psychiatrist’s prescription.
If kindness has become an annual funfair, then consider me the fairground trader who closes up shop on that day.

It’s the best-organised hypocrisy of the century: these ‘world days’. We’re sold 365 days of ‘causes’ to spare us 365 days of responsibility. I’ve chosen to rebel against this moral ‘ready-made thinking’ that allows us to be obnoxious for the rest of the year, provided we’re polite on the big day.