Just when you thought it was safe to get rid of that bag of leftover Halloween candy, here comes National Candy Day.Â
As best we can tell, the November 4th holiday of National Candy Day is yet another made-up internet holiday with no apparent provenance (there have apparently been 8,136 Presidential proclamations of public observances since Washington, most now defunct, but none of them seem to be about candy).
But it was almost a thing. In 1916, the National Confectioners Association declared that the second Saturday of October would be Candy Day (candy wasn’t associated with Halloween in the United States until the 1950s). Not for the crass capitalist excuse of pushing candy on the public of course, but in pursuit of the noble goal of celebrating “good will, appreciation and good fellowship”.
Behind the scenes, of course, hidden in the pages of trade journals like Candy and Ice Cream, Association members were a little less noble-minded, telling their readers in the industry that “It's simply asking you if you want to make some extra money, and if you do, you are requested to go ahead and push this "Candy Day" idea”.
While the marketing ploy had some initial success, it was short lived, as sugar rationing during World War I made the corporate holiday unsustainable. A second attempt after the war, however, launched in 1921 under the rebranded name of “Sweetest Day”, this time cloaked in twice the syrupy layers of sentimentality (and a bogus origin myth that some publishers repeat to this day), also failed to stick in the molars of popular culture. Except, that is, for some communities around the Great Lakes. Fowler’s Chocolates in Buffalo, New York has continued the tradition of Sweetest Day celebrations, as has the Sanders Candy Company in Detroit and confectioners in Cleveland. For these Midwestern sugar-fiends, Hallmark also has a line of Sweetest Day cards, launched in 2006.
This image, created by the DuPont Company, was a 1950 advertisement that ran in popular publications like The Saturday Evening Post, and traded on America’s love affair with candy to sell cellophane. This item is part of the Hagley’s collection of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company Advertising Department records (Accession 1803). You can view more material from this collection online now by visiting its page in our Digital Archive.
