National Siblings Day: Celebrate or Pass?

How will you celebrate or commemorate National Siblings Day on Friday, April 10, or is it just another manufactured holiday to sell cards, flowers and other gifts?

Or, is it a gut-wrenching reminder that you and your siblings are estranged?

The initial goal of the Siblings Day Foundation was to establish a national day of recognition for brothers and sisters, to be called National Siblings day, held annually on April 10^th, according to the Massachusetts-based nonprofit. Siblings Day follows the spirit of Mother’s and Father’s Day, an uplifting celebration honoring people who have helped in our development and who have shaped our values, beliefs and ideals.

The Foundation seeks to unite and reunite siblings who may have been separated by distance, by circumstance, by birth and adoption or interpersonal familial issues.

Claudia Evart, a native New Yorker, after losing both of her siblings early in life, was inspired to create the Siblings Day Foundation, in honor and tribute to her siblings, and chose April 10th as National Siblings Day, the birthday of her late sister, Lisette, according to the Foundation.

I was vaguely familiar with the set-aside day two years ago when a friend of posted about it on social media. Her brutal candor was both refreshing and jolting.

“I’m happy for everyone who has siblings they love and respect, but we aren’t all so lucky,” she wrote. “I have a brother who hasn’t spoken to me since 1990. I don’t miss him. I am, however, quite grateful to have close friends who always – and still do — treat me like a sister. They made life bearable growing up. I wouldn’t have mead it without them.”

She named four specific people in her post and referred to them as, “the craziest but most loving family I know.”

She was, as they say, keeping it real. Why pretend to have this Norman Rockwell life when in fact you don’t, she asked rhetorically?

The commemorative day has been recognized by three US Presidents (Clinton in 2000, Bush in 2008 and Obama in 2016). Since 1998, the governors of 49 states have officially issued proclamations to recognize Siblings Day in their state.

So, will you celebrate or pass?