National Unicorn Day? Yes! Celebrating Fantasy, and Hope

For real

Photo by Tai's Captures on Unsplash

The other day I learned that it was National Unicorn Day. How can this be, I wondered — a whole day to celebrate the mythical horse-like creature with a spiral horn growing from the center of its forehead? With garlands of sparkly stars around its neck and colored hearts braided into its mane? And sometimes with wings letting them sail through the air?

I went online to see what I could find and, sure enough, right there on the National Calendar Day website, there it was — National Unicorn Day. It was also National Chinese Almond Cookie Day, National Winston Churchill Day, and National Name Yourself Day.

Discovering all these other celebrations distracted me for a moment but I quickly redirected my attention to focus on National Unicorn Day, and the more I thought about it, the more questions I had. The more questions I had, the more I needed some answers.

First I wanted to know when National Unicorn Day began. Was it a new holiday? An old tradition? How many have I missed? Given that unicorns have been around since ancient times — when they were believed to live in India and China — I thought that a day in their honor might be similarly long-running. But we’ve been celebrating unicorns only for 10 years. I am not too late to the party after all.

Next I wanted to know who’s responsible for this occasion. Who created it? Who decided that it should exist, even though unicorns do not? Well, it seems that many of us probably had a hand in creating this holiday, emerging as it did from the popularity of unicorns on social media and other online communities, where so many of us now spend so much of our time.

But I wasn’t able to discover how, exactly, unicorns made the leap from internet memes to a day on our calendar on par with Mother’s Day. Maybe it’s just the nature of viral phenomena — they reach a mysterious point where they begin to spill into other spheres, like bird flu, for example, or COVID, and then they must be recognized and accommodated or, in the case of unicorns, celebrated.

And how are we supposed to do that? I mean, unicorns don’t exist, except online, which doesn’t count, even though we now have an actual unicorn holiday. At first I thought that this would be a major issue. But I soon found that it’s not. We celebrate unicorns with food, costumes, stories, and parties — nourishment and entertainment — much in the same way that we celebrate many other things.

For example, one website suggests making cupcakes and unicorn-shaped cookies decorated with multicolored sprinkles or glitter. Another discusses making unicorn masks and hats. A third mentions watching shows or movies featuring unicorns or reading books where they are characters. I even found a recipe for a unicorn milkshake, the straw in each frosted glass serving as the horn. How about a field trip to a unicorn sanctuary? All aboard!

Throwing a party is also an option, and maybe the practical one — it could combine all of the above into a single event. Really, it seems as if there are no limits to celebrating unicorns, except our imaginations, and they seem to be working just fine if we can invent a holiday celebrating something that does not exist.

Leprechauns, in case you are wondering, do not yet have an official holiday of their own, but they do have a robust and vivid online presence. It’s probably just a matter of time until they reach that critical viral load and then spring upon us in the real world.

Of all the ways to celebrate unicorns the one that intrigues me most is visiting a unicorn sanctuary. It’s not just the logistics of such an excursion that fascinate me. Do we go by car? Bus? Plane? Magic carpet? Is admission free? Is there a senior discount? Group rates? Should we bring some snacks? Treats for the unicorns? Would they like carrots? Apples?

It’s also the word “sanctuary” — a place of refuge or safety. It gives me some insight into why we have invented a holiday to celebrate something that is not real. What are we after here, recognizing unicorns with their own day, in all these festive ways?

Have we lost our minds? Are we just wasting our time? I don’t think so. I think we are trying to satisfy a real, deep need for wonder and hope, for enchantment and dreaming, in a world so often closed or hostile to hoping and dreaming.

Maybe, then, every day should be National Unicorn Day. I am glad make a some cookies and hats. And the line for the unicorn sanctuary starts right over there.

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