Weird and Wacky October Holidays

october holidays calendar

Unusual October Holidays in the U.S. (2025)

The unusual holidays in October let us celebrate a little bit of everything! Whether you want to relish your favorite foods, enjoy some entertainment, or create something new, this is an excellent month for it. (Especially if you’re still waiting for autumn to really take hold so you can enjoy that crisp fall air!

Let’s dig into the unique October holidays for 2025!

Sorry that this month’s calendar is so late! I was moving my website from one provider to another, and it took much longer than expected.

October 1: National Homemade Cookies Day

The first thing a lot of people learn to bake is homemade cookies. Perhaps your journey with cookies started even earlier, getting to decorate holiday cookies before you were allowed anywhere near batter!

Did you know that when your grandma (or whoever!) was teaching you to bake cookies as a kid, they were teaching you science? All cookies require five ingredient types: sugar, fat, flour, a rising agent, and a binding agent. Typically, these are brown/white sugar, butter/margarine, flour, baking soda/powder, and eggs. And as you experimented, perhaps adding or removing sugar (resulting in more or less spreading), changing out all-purpose flour for cake flour (creating a cakier cookie), or using egg whites instead of whole eggs (making the cookie crispier), you were really doing experiments!

While there’s nothing wrong with store-bought cookies—I’m partial to those cheap sugar cookies every place seems to sell around all holidays—there’s just something special about making your own. On this first fun October holiday, take some time to revisit your favorite recipe!

Celebration Ideas

October 2: National Name Your Car Day

Naming your car has a long history, from Herbie the Love Bug to Lightning McQueen to James Dean’s (and potentially cursed) Little Bastard. Why not take this day to name the vehicle that gets you from point A to point B?

My first car was named Bella Frank, by the way. She was a Subaru and held together with duct tape. Don’t do that.

Celebration Ideas

October 3: Mean Girls Day

The modern classic movie Mean Girls spawned sequels and a hit Broadway musical (with the line “October 3rd. My new favorite day!”). Today, October 3rd, is Mean Girls Day because “On October 3rd, he asked me what day it was.”

On the surface, Mean Girls looked like it was going to be just another teenage chick flick. But while the plot, on the surface, looks like it’s driven by two girls dueling over the same boy, it goes a lot deeper than that. Usually, the “mean girls” are side characters in teen films. Villains, the butt of the jokes, nothing more. This movie allows us to join their clique and see what it’s really like in there—for all of them. And while Regina George never undergoes the “I’m a good person now!” transformation we’ve come to expect, you don’t walk away hating her. You also don’t walk away loving our protagonist. Everyone is a little more complicated than that.

And isn’t that the way being a teenage girl is?

Celebration Ideas

October 4: National Vodka Day

National Vodka Day celebrates the most popular spirit in North America! It accounts for 20% to 25% of all spirit sales in the country. Because the drink is more or less tasteless and odorless, it can be a great base for many drinks pr infused with other flavors.

Often associated with Russia, the drink has long been a part of Scandinavian, Ukrainian, Polish, and Belarusian cultures. No one really knows where it first appeared, but it’s been a known quantity since around the 12th century, when it was used for medical reasons.

Did you know that vodka can be made from potatoes, wheat, grapes, or beets? The way the drink is made matters more than the ingredients.

As an aside: When I was in college for theatre, we sprayed costumes with cheap vodka after each rehearsal and performance to deodorize them. It was cost-effective and killed the bacteria causing orders rather than covering them with fragrances.

Celebration Ideas

October 5: National Apple Betty Day

Like many desserts, Apple Betties are a descendant of older recipes. The “Betty” is a pudding dessert from England, which was brought over to America during colonial times. This favorite of Ronald and Nancy Reagan is a variation of a “brown betty.” The first printed Brown Betty recipe dates to 1864, and in 1877, a recipe using apple sauce and cracker crumbs was published.

Where an apple crisp has an oat-based topping to give it a crispy texture and a cobbler has a cake-like batter on top, apple betties have a crumble made of flour, butter, and spices on top. The aroma that fills your house as it cooks is the epitome of fall itself, warm and cozy.

Celebration Ideas

October 6: National Noodle Day

Noodles are a staple of cuisine worldwide, but they aren’t all made the same way. According to the Culinary Arts Academy in Switzerland, there are four basic types of noodles: wheat-based, rice-based, buckwheat and starch-based, and alternative. Wheat-based noodles are typical in Europe and Asia, but Asia is also rich in rice-based and buckwheat and starch-based noodles. Alternative options include those for particular diets, like gluten-free, and more specific regional options.

You can find noodles as the base of foods, like spaghetti with sauce and meatballs, or as a significant ingredient, like the noodles in ramen. Noodles allow flavors to shine through while filling our bellies.

Celebration Ideas

October 7: National Frappe Day

Frappes are iced coffee drinks that traditionally combine espresso, water, sugar, and milk, which is then shaken or blended with ice. Though the exact origins of the drink are unknown, the frappe we know really showed up at the Thessaloniki International Fair in Greece in 1957. There, a representative from Nestlé was making an instant drink combining chocolate and milk in a shaker. On a break, one of his employees realized they had no hot water for coffee, so they mixed instant coffee with ice and cold water, shaking it in the shaker. And the frappe was born.

Frappes are still popular across Greece, though they are everywhere these days!

Fun fact: “Frappuccino” is a combination of “frozen” and “cappuccino,” not a variation on “frappe.” Also, Starbucks didn’t invent them. But that’s a story for another time.

Celebration Ideas

October 8: National Fluffernutter Day

If Paul Revere hadn’t ridden his horse at full speed, telling everyone the British were coming, we may not have the fluffernutter sandwich. Seriously. The fluffernutter, so called because it’s made of marshmallow fluff and peanut butter, was invented during World War I by Revere’s great-great-great-granddaughter, Emma Curtis. People had been making marshmallow fluff for a good while before her brother, Amory, developed a version so popular that he ended up needing a whole factory—the Curtis Marshmallow Factory in Melrose, MA—to meet demand.

Emma had been creating treats using marshmallow crème for a good while before inventing the “Liberty Sandwich.” The recipe was then put on the jars of Amory’s company’s SMAC Marshmallow fluff.

We can trace the history of the fluffernutter all the way to modern day, and Somerville, MA, holds an annual celebration called “What the Fluff?” which celebrates both Marshmallow Fluff and the fluffernutter sandwich.

Celebration Ideas

October 9: National Moldy Cheese Day

Don’t worry, I’m not talking about cheese that’s turned green! This October holiday celebrates those cheeses that may make some people raise an eyebrow: those with obvious, intentional mold. While you might immediately think of blue cheese, it’s not the only type of moldy cheese out there. There’s also blue cheddar, gorgonzola, and many others.

The fact is, “In a lot of ways, cheese is mold” (according to cheese expert Rich Morillo, via an article in Bon Appétit). It just needs not to be fresh and soft cheese like mozzarella. Even that rind on the outside of brie is a type of mold!

Obviously, this isn’t medical advice, but the Mayo Clinic says you can likely eat hard and semisoft cheeses like colby and cheddar if they’ve grown mold—you just need to cut the moldy part off, leaving an inch around and below it. You have to throw away moldy soft, shredded, crumbled, or sliced cheese, though. (And as someone with a mold allergy, I’m not risking any of it!)

Celebration Ideas

October 10: National Cake Decorating Day

From Nailed It to Is It Cake? and from memes about cake decorating gone wrong to images of beautiful wedding cakes, it’s clear that many people have a fascination with the art of cake decorating. And why shouldn’t they? Cake decorating takes creativity, precision, and hours of work.

This fun October holiday is a chance to try your skills at decorating a cake (or other baked good—not everyone likes cake, of course).

Celebration Ideas

October 11: National Sausage Pizza Day

Pizza is a surprisingly versatile food. You can get the classic with tomato sauce, cheese, and whatever meat and veggies you like. Or, you can get it with barbecue sauce, chicken, and pineapple. Or, if you’re like me, you can get jalapeno popper pizza with a cream cheese base, bacon, and jalapenos.

And of course, you can always get sausage pizza. Every October 11th, we celebrate the third most popular pizza topping in the United States (after extra cheese and pepperoni). If you want to indulge in this type of pizza and have everything be the third most popular, then you should get stuffed-crust California-style pizza cut into strips with ranch to dip it in, and you need to go back and forth between your hands and a knife and fork.

(Stuffed-crust California-style pizza is impossible, by the way.)

Celebration Ideas

October 12: National Gumbo Day

Gumbo is the official state dish of Louisiana, but don’t expect to find the same meal every time you try it. Most gumbos start with the “trinity” of chopped onions, bell peppers, and celery, along with some kind of roux. It’s almost always served atop a bed of rice. However, that’s often where the similarities end. Gumbo is unique to each restaurant and family, making it a deeply personal dish.

What’s great about such a versatile dish is that you can make it your own or find one that suits your dietary needs when you’re out and about. While many gumbos contain meats like chicken, sausage, or seafood, you may be able to get your hands on duck or steak gumbos! And if you’re a vegetarian, keep an eye out for “gumbo z’herbes,” which is meat-free.

Celebration Ideas

October 13: National Train Your Brain Day

Remember how everyone was playing Wordle in 2020 and 2021? What about that Sudoku craze of the early 2000s? This clever October holiday encourages us to dust the cobwebs out of some parts of our brains and do some puzzles or begin learning a new skill (or revisit an old one).

These activities do more than help us pass the time. Some studies have shown that brain teasers may help with mental health and attention, and there seems to be a relationship between the frequency of doing puzzles and improved cognitive function among older adults. They’re also often relaxing—and who couldn’t use a bit of relaxation?

Celebration Ideas

October 14: National Dessert Day

While every month celebrates a few desserts, this October holiday is sure to satisfy your sweet tooth, no matter what kind of treat is your favorite. Whether you like ice cream or crème brulee, dark or white chocolate, or cake or pie, this is the day for you to indulge.

Celebration Ideas

October 15: National Grouch Day

In 1969, an orange monster emerged from a trash can to tell us about all his woes.

Wait…orange?

Yep! Oscar the Grouch said he went on vacation to the Swamp Mushy Muddy over the break between seasons one and two of Sesame Street, and the slime turned him orange. (The real reason was that early color television struggled with orange.)

In 2013, Sesame Street Magazine declaredthat October 15th is National Grouch Day. Today is a day you can grumble and complain—but don’t be mean. Oscar may be a grouch, but he doesn’t try to make folks feel bad!

Celebration Ideas

October 16: National Dictionary Day

Noah Webster was born on October 16, 1758, and he would publish the first American dictionary in 1806. But he wouldn’t stop with that shorter version! He went on to learn twenty-six languages so that he could fully understand where American English came from. In 1828, Webster’s much lengthier An American Dictionary of the English Language was published, and it held 70,000 words.

The whole history of Webster and his dictionary is well worth looking into! But today, let’s focus on celebrating his greatest work: The origins of the dictionary we know today. Without that, it would be a lot easier to lose our language or see how it evolves.

Celebration Ideas

October 17: National Mulligan Day

Have you ever heard “I’ll give you a mulligan on this one” (or something similar)? That just means “you get a do-over.” And oh boy, I guarantee all of us have had a moment or two (or million…) where we wish we could take something back, head down a different path, or even give that witty comeback we didn’t think of until an hour later.

“Mulligan” comes from golf, and it means a player is allowed to do the same move or action again. It’s not a thing in professional golf; it’s more of something to help a golfing buddy during a casual game.

This October holiday is a do-over day. (Not to be confused with the June holiday “Repeat Day.”) It’s a day when you can try again. While it’s easiest to do that in the moment, you could find a way to get a mulligan on something from the past. Importantly, it’s also a day when you can give someone else a mulligan. Everyone needs one from time to time.

And, it’s a day for a fresh start. Try to let something from your past go if you know you’ll never get a do-over. (Easier said than done. I know.)

Celebration Ideas

October 18: National Chocolate Cupcake Day

July may have had World Chocolate Day, but October celebrates a specific kind of chocolate dessert: Cupcakes, also called “fairy cakes.” They are often associated with children’s birthday parties. They were much easier to share with the class in elementary school than a whole cake would have been, and they are far less likely to start arguments over who got the bigger slice, too!

The first known cupcake recipe appeared in American Cookery way back in 1796, though we don’t really know how long they had been around before that. They get their name from being baked in individual cups, molds, or ramekins rather than a tray like we use today. (I wonder what they would be called if they were invented in the era of trays.)

Today is specifically about chocolate cupcakes, a favorite of many people and easily found both in recipe books and on grocery store shelves as the Hostess CupCake. If you’re a chocolate lover, it’s a wonderful day to indulge!

Celebration Ideas

October 19: National Evaluate Your Life Day

Have you ever found yourself thinking, “What am I even doing??”

This is the day to really dig into that thought.

Look at what’s going on in your life. What’s working? What isn’t? Are you happy? If not, how can you become happy?

And instead of wallowing — which we all do from time to time, and that’s okay! — plan to make things better.

(She says, knowing full well she is really bad at that.)

Celebration Ideas

October 20: National Day on Writing

The National Council of Teachers of English founded the National Day on Writing. It’s a day for us to recognize the need for writing and, most importantly, do a little bit of writing of our own.

I’m a former English teacher, and every day, my students were given a prompt and told to write for three minutes without stopping. No worrying about grammar or spelling. No worrying about whether they even made sense! Just get the thoughts on paper. The goal was to make them less afraid of the judgment that can come with writing—and, for a lot of them, it worked. So, my advice on this day? Just write. See what happens.

Celebration Ideas

October 21: Back to the Future Day

National Back to the Future Day began on October 21, 2015. It celebrates the trilogy that sent Marty McFly and Doc Brown to the future, to the past, and back again. The first Back to the Future movie was the highest-grossing film of 1985 and is now preserved in the National Film Registry. Adjusting for inflation, all three movies made around a combined $2 billion! (Can you imagine saying that number to Marty’s parents back in 1955?)

The ages of the actors and characters are fascinating. While Doc Brown was made out to be a kooky older man of 65, Christopher Lloyd was only 46 when filming the first movie in the franchise! He also had to be aged down to 35. Michael J. Fox was 23 while playing a 17-year-old. Lea Thompson, who played Marty’s mom, and Crispin Glover, who played his dad, were 23 and 20, respectively, while filming. However, their characters were 17 and 47, depending on the scene!

Celebration Ideas

October 22: National Color Day

National Color Day celebrates how color affects us. While you may have heard that specific colors are more calming or invigorating than others, did you know that at least one study shows that colors may also represent the feelings someone already has? It showed that people who were feeling positive during the study were more likely to pick light colors, while those who were in a negative mood chose darker shades.

Color symbolism isn’t as straightforward as it may seem, though. Take yellow, for instance. It can symbolize joy and sunshine, but it can also stand for cowardice (“yellow-bellied”). Or red, which in Western culture may be associated with passion and love or danger and aggression depending on the circumstances, China sees red as a lucky color, and it’s often worn at weddings.

At the end of the day, ask yourself: Do I like this color? Because that’s what really matters.

As I write this, I am sitting in a deep pink office with black, sparkly accent wallpaper and wearing an orange sweater. These things make me happy. What colors make you experience positive emotions?

Celebration Ideas

October 23: National TV Talk Show Host Day

This October holiday falls on the 23rd because that was Johnny Carson’s birthday! And, today—October 23, 2025—would have been his 100th. On National TV Talk Show Day, we celebrate those who have television programs with titles that include their names, where they focus the vast majority of their time interviewing guests. The guests can be there for entertainment, politics, social issues, emotional topics, and any number of things—though the hosts usually just focus on one.

While I doubt the kids of today are as likely to lie on the couch watching talk shows when they’re home sick or to stay up late to watch their favorite stars on one of the late shows, they’re watching clips on TikTok or YouTube.

And if 2025 has taught us anything about talk show hosts, it’s that they still make an impact on society.

Celebration Ideas

October 24: National Bologna Day

This October holiday celebrates the humblest of lunchmeats: bologna. This staple of school lunches has come a long way since its beginning back in 15th-century Bologna, Italy. Mortadella is a smoked sausage that, over the centuries, has spun off into the bologna we know today.

National Bologna Day reminds us to enjoy the simple things, like a bologna sandwich on white bread, crusts cut off.

Celebration Ideas

October 25: National Sourest Day

If you’re like me, you learned there are four basic types of taste: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. However, that’s been debunked, and there are now five basic recognized flavors. (Some sources say seven, but that’s not the point today, so let’s keep it simple.) No matter how many recognized flavors there are, sour has always been among them. And that’s not surprising, given how strong a flavor it is even in lighter amounts.

Today is the day to enjoy something sour, whether it’s candy or a citrus fruit. I’m going with sour gummy worms.

Celebration Ideas

October 26: National Pumpkin Day

There is no surer sign that fall is here than when pumpkins start adorning front porches or windows. As I write this in September—coincidentally on September 22, the first official day of fall—they’re really the only sign of the season!

The close relationship between humans and pumpkins existed long before pumpkin spice lattes or even the Jack-o-lanterns (which were originally turnips or potatoes, anyway!). The oldest seeds discovered thus far were found in Mexico and are believed to be from between 7000 and 5500 B.C.E. And this fruit — yes, it’s a fruit! — was harvested well before Europeans arrived on North American soil, with Native people growing them next to rivers, alongside corn and beans (the “Three Sisters”).

Now, they’re enjoyed both as décor and food throughout the fall, even if about 80% of them ripen only in October.

Celebration Ideas

October 27: Boxer Shorts Day

Boxer shorts allow for freer movement than other types of underpants—hence the name! The inspiration for boxer shorts is the shorts boxers wear while in the ring. They’re one of about eight types of underwear for men, who are the most likely to wear them.

This type of underwear provides a lot of coverage but not a lot of support, so being mindful of when you wear them can be wise. So, you could take this holiday as an excuse to lounge around the house!

Celebration Ideas

October 28: National Plush Animal Lovers Day

While we celebrated Teddy Bear Day back in September, National Plush Animal Lovers Day extends the celebration to folks who love all sorts of plush animals. You may still have your favorite stuffed toy puppy from childhood, or you could find yourself unable to resist a Squishmallow when you see one at the store. No matter what kind of plush animal you adore, this is the day for you!

Just…don’t read the Velveteen Rabbit. That one still hurts.

Celebration Ideas

October 29: National Cat Day

National Cat Day intends to raise awareness of the need for cat adoptions. While cats can breed year-round, animal shelters are more likely to have an influx of kittens during “kitten season,” which runs from about March through October. Animal shelters are overrun even outside of this time of year, but the number of animals coming in during these months becomes beyond overwhelming.

Because of the overflow, shelters often must turn away animals—the opposite of what they want to do. Out of desperation, cats (and dogs and other domesticated animals) can end up abandoned, put in dangerous situations in hopes that a shelter or person will take pity on them, or worse.

Celebration Ideas

October 30: National Candy Corn Day

Did you know candy corn is available all year? And in assorted flavors?

Did you know that candy corn has a flavor?

If you can’t tell, I’m on the side of disliking candy corn. But lots of people love the vanilla/marshmallow treat. Tradition says that candy corn was invented by George Renninger of Wunderlee Candy Company in Philadelphia about 140 years ago! The company later became Jelly Belly, and they use the original recipe to this day.

Celebration Ideas

October 31: National Knock-Knock Joke Day

Wrapping up October’s wacky holidays (and ignoring that today is Halloween…), National Knock Knock Joke Day celebrates the first jokes many kids learn. The formulaic set-up and surprise endings make them a terrific way to teach young people about humor. Plus, knock-knock jokes can be great icebreakers or ways to break the tension!

Celebration Ideas

October 2025 wacky holiday calendar
PDF of October 2025 calendar