History of Sweetest Day

Celebrated on the third Saturday of October, Sweetest Day is a day that is meant to celebrate the people who have made a difference to your life, people who contribute to making your life worth living. Sweetest Day is an opportunity to spread some happiness and cheer by giving gifts, cards and sweets to associates, relatives and friends.

Sweetest Day is basically an American Holiday that is celebrated in regions such as the Great Lakes and the northeast. It is states like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin and Illinois that have the greatest observance of this holiday and the cities that fall under this category are Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo and Chicago. Of course today with people moving to various parts of the country this holiday is reaching other parts of the United States as well!

History of Sweetest Day

The origin of Sweetest Day goes back to the year 1922. It was in this year that Herbert Birch Kingston, a local candy shop employee in Cleveland, Ohio, began distributing candy’s and small gifts to those people who were going through difficult times. He did this on a Saturday in October with help of his neighbors and friends. It was after this gesture that other people in Cleveland did the same.

Soon movies personalities followed suit. Ann Pennington, a movie star distributed boxes of candy to 2,200 Cleveland newspaper boys on the first Sweetest Day. She did this to express her gratitude to them for their services to the public. Another movie star, Theda Bera also distributed 10,000 boxes of candy to people who were in the hospitals in Cleveland. Apart from this she also offered candy to those people who came to the local theater to watch her movie.

Celebration of Sweetest Day Today

Though Sweetest Day began as a regional holiday, today the custom has moved all across the county. The state of Ohio heads the list when it comes to the sales of Sweetest Day cards. Other states that are included in the list of top ten include Texas, California and Florida. As the years have gone by, Sweetest Day has turned into a day to celebrate romantic love, very much like Valentine’s Day.