September is Women's Friendship Month. Forgive me if I sound less than thrilled.
I go back and forth between championing friendship holidays and feeling slightly squeamish over them. Much like one of Santa's helpers admitting some ambivalence about Christmas, it feels slightly wrong to be a spokesperson for women's friendship and not promote every one of the holidays.
Notice that word was plural. I love my friends, but even my mom only gets one holiday! Look at this mess:
Friendship Holidays Throughout the Year
- All over the Web, February is touted as the International Month of Friendship. If you know why, I'd love to know, but indeed there are over 32 million results claiming it is so.
See what I mean? What's a friendship girl to do?
There are simply too many groups of people naming different dates and too large a plethora of variations on the theme. If I don't throw up pom-poms on each of the said dates, then I feel like a friendship Scrooge or slacker; if I try to give honorable mention to all of them, they all seem to start losing some meaning. I suppose I should just be thrilled to have more opportunities to promote friendship, but wouldn't any holiday start to lose some joy if we all celebrated it at different times and at half a dozen unique dates throughout the year?
But one month I can do.
So until you all figure out the best holiday schedule, I'm going to stick to celebrating September as Friendship Month. (Who knows, I may throw in another date here and there just so I don't feel like a total friendship Grinch refusing to play with everyone else.)
Four Fabulous Ways to Celebrate Your Friends
Let's love on our freinds! Here are themes to help you start thinking about how you can rekindle, celebrate and create friendships this month.
- Plan a get-together with local friends: Schedule a brunch or dinner party for later this month and invite your friends. And no worries if they don't all know each other. This can be a small GirlFriend Gratitude Party where you celebrate your three besties, or it can be a big night out with friends encouraged to bring their other friends!
Pick your holiday, name your month, vote for your favorite version, or start yet another one, but what it really comes down to is loving your friends well.
And, I promise you, if you love them well this month, I won't make you do it again in February.
Shasta is celebrating Friendship Month by starting to vlog on friendship! Subscribe to her new YouTube channel where she'll be posting three-minute teaching clips throughout the month!