International Friendship Day 2022: Date, history, significance, celebrations of the day

International Friendship Day 2022: If parents are your first guide, friends are your companions that help navigate the unfamiliar and lesser travelled roads in the journey called life. A friend makes us believe in ourselves when things don’t seem rosy and pulls us out of our darkest phase. No wonder many people are making friends their centre of life as opposed to a ‘dream partner’ that may not even exist. A day dedicated to friendship is probably not enough and that’s why there are multiple friendship days across the world, celebrated on different days. (Also read: International Friendship Day 2022: Impact of friendship on mental health)

Date

International Friendship Day is celebrated annually on July 30 and it was first proposed way back in the year 1958 by World Friendship Crusade, an international civil organisation that campaigns to foster a culture of peace through friendship. It was in the year 2011 that the day was formally adopted as International Day of Friendship by the General Assembly of United Nations.

In India as well as many other countries, Friendship Day is also celebrated on the first Sunday of August. This year it falls on August 7, 2022.

History

Even before the proposal of World Friendship Crusade, the first-ever friendship day was perhaps conceptualised by Greeting Card National Association that tried to sell the idea of a Friendship Day in 1920s to increase sale of their greeting cards but back then people were not ready to buy this idea thinking it was a gimmick. In 1930, Joyce Hall, the founder of Hallmark Cards, Inc, created the first widely known National Friendship Day on August 2 but this too fizzled out with time.

Who knew that many years later, there would be so many takers to this idea. The concept of a Global Friendship Day was first proposed on July 20, 1958 by Dr Ramon Artemio Bracho while eating out with his friends in Puerto Pinasco, a town in Paraguay. During the said meeting, the World Friendship Crusade was born.

Significance

According to United Nations, International Day of Friendship can help promote peace and social harmony among people. “Our world faces many challenges, crises and forces of division — such as poverty, violence, and human rights abuses — among many others — that undermine peace, security, development and social harmony among the world’s peoples. To confront those crises and challenges, their root causes must be addressed by promoting and defending a shared spirit of human solidarity that takes many forms — the simplest of which is friendship. Through friendship — by accumulating bonds of camaraderie and developing strong ties of trust — we can contribute to the fundamental shifts that are urgently needed to achieve lasting stability, weave a safety net that will protect us all, and generate passion for a better world where all are united for the greater good,” according to UN.

Celebrations in different countries

Friendship Day is celebrated on February 14, the same day as Valentine’s Day in Ecuador, Mexico, Venezuela, Finland, Estonia and the Dominican Republic mainly for singles who are yet to find their partner. In Ukraine, Friendship Day is celebrated on June 9 while in South Africa the celebrations take place on April 16. Similarly, the day is celebrated on different dates worldwide.

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