National Grandparents Day


Yesterday (21.01) in Poland we celebrated the Grandmother's Day. Today (22.01) it is the day when we celebrate the Grandfather's Day. However, only in Poland, these two days are actually devoted to the reminiscence of our grandparents because around the world people celebrate the presence of their ancestors the first Sunday after The Labour Day (so it is the first Sunday of the September). The idea to create such a day in the calendar came from the American woman – Mariane McQuade, who lived in the 1970s in the US, whose aime was to encourage families to visit their grandparents and parents in nursing homes so that they didn't feel abandoned and redundant. In the campaign Mariane also strongly emphasised the importance of elder people in the society, shown as a kind of still living history, better than any other historic book. The date, established finally by the president of the US – Jimmy Carter in 1978, had also a symbolic message because September, being the first month of the automne, indicates the ''autumn years' of life. It is also worth to mention that this day has its official anthem: 'A Song for Grandma and Grandpa' and the symbol of this event is the flower 'forget-me-not'.  

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