My Favorite Day of the Year

Serralunga d’Alba, Italy; photo by the author

Today, the day before Thanksgiving, is my favorite day of the year. It has been for as long as I can remember. There are a few reasons why:

• Fall is my favorite season;
• November is my favorite month;
• Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday; and
• It immediately precedes a four-day weekend.

But these reasons are all icing on the cake, so to speak. The real reason today is my favorite day of the year is an annual tradition of going to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons being inflated around the Museum of Natural History. Granted, this has become a lot less fun since the September 11 attacks (with significantly greater police presence and crowd control mechanisms), and won’t happen in 2020 at all, but it remains something that I look forward to each and every year.

Each year I ask my team to share their favorite days of the year. It’s become a fun team-building tradition. Here are the results from this year (omitting a fair number of people due to vacation, etc.):

• Christmas Eve (5)
• My birthday (4)
• New Year’s Eve (2)
• Saint Stephen’s Day (Boxing Day in some countries) (2)
• Thanksgiving (2)
• April 25
• Christmas Day
• Cinco de Mayo
• Day before Thanksgiving
• Diwali
• Easter
• Groundhog Day
• Halloween
• June 6
• Saturday before Memorial Day
• Saint Patrick’s Day
• Summer Solstice

What’s your favorite day of the year? Let me know in the comments below. Happy (day before) Thanksgiving!