#weirdholidays

The holiday of unknown origins comes just a few days after another holiday that celebrates trickery and lying - April Fool's Day and a few weeks before Honesty Day, a made-up holiday that honors the virtue of honesty and truth-telling.

Acceptable Lying

While the name suggests that the holiday encourages people to tell lies all day long, we would like to think that the day is not an actual celebration of lying but an acknowledgment that lying is part of life, and sometimes people have to lie to make others feel better. Such lies are called white lies and are possibly the only form of lying acceptable within most religions, cultures, and societies.

Other acceptable forms of lying include: lying while playing a game (bluffing), lies made for the purposes of amusement of the liar or other people (jocose lies), and untruthful statements made without any malicious intent (honest lie).

This holiday is also known as National Tell a Lie Day in the US.

How to Celebrate?

While we cannot in good conscience endorse or encourage lying, here are some harmless ways to celebrate this "fictional" holiday:

Missed April Fool's Day? Use this day to make up for it by playing harmless tricks on friends, family, and colleagues.

Make up silly stories about harmless things and recount them to the people around you. Who knows, you may even get a laugh or two out of your listeners!

Read more about how to detect deception and lying.

Play games that require bluffing.

Read tales that warn people about the dangers of lying. Some of these tales include The Boy who Cried Wolf and Pinocchio.

Did You Know...

...that a true or false response to the question this statement is not true leads to a contradiction called the Liar's Paradox? If the response to this statement is that it is true, then the statement is false, and if the response to the statement is that it is false, then the statement is true.