Friend’s Day: A day for celebration in Argentina
This post is a collaborative post written in group by #TeamArgentina. One of us is the one that publishes it, but we all cooperate in the idea, the writing process and/or the photo selection.
If you plan a visit to Argentina, save this date: July,20th! Nope… it’s not our National Day! It’s Friend’s Day! And thousands of people go out to bars and cafés for a big time celebration.
If this date catches you by surprise, you’re not going to find a single little spot at any restaurant, pub, or coffee shop. Some people make their reservations weeks ahead to meet their friends on that day.
Why is July 20th Friend’s day?
What do you know about this day? I’ve heard several stories about it, and of course we have our own! It began in the mind of a UBA graduate, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Enrique Febbraro, born in San Cristóbal , Buenos Aires. His father was a boheme who was friends with many celebrities of the time like Borges, Leopoldo Lugones, and tangueros like Homero Manzi and Enrique Santos Discépolo. Some say he would be present in his father’s meetings sitting among his friends pouring some mates while he enjoyed the profound conversations.
He had learnt about friendship at home from an early age and had been waiting for years for the perfect event to initiate a campaign to celebrate Friends and Friendship around the world. The announcement of a man’s first steps on the Moon in July 1969 provided the perfect occasion.
In times when there were no social media (or internet whatsoever) , his options seemed limited, but nonetheless he used his family connections and his state of Rotary Club and Lions International member. He wrote 100 letters and sent his proposal around the world: he succeeded with a total of 700 initial responses.
Today, Friend’s Day is celebrated in countless countries around the world. Although it has been commercialized, in Argentina the basis remains: it’s a celebration that involves sharing. Shared jokes, shared moments and memories. We Argentinians love spending time with others. We like getting together just because, no excuses, no planning, it only takes a text ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ and we’re up for trouble!
As a country we witnessed much change along our history, for good or for bad, but it’s really comforting to see everybody sitting at the table every July, 20th ‘back’ to simpler times where anecdotes and laughter come and go, just like in Enrique’s time.
The invisible friend
It is a widespread habit in our country to play the “invisible friend”.
What’s it about? As buying a present for each of your friends would be too much, an amount of money is agreed upon and everybody gets a friend’s name at random, nowadays this is done via apps that send it to your phone. Everyone buys only one present with that special friend in mind. Sometimes if participants see each other often (like at school or in the office) you can leave anonymous clues (which may include a sweet treat) for your friend to try to guess your identity.
On the day of the party, everybody gets a gift and the identities are revealed.
#TeamArgentina’s Friend’s Day
Caro (@CaroGuiniazu):
Restaurants usually offer a special menu together with live shows or performances.
I’m used to having more than one party. One for each group of friends: those from childhood, work,gym… and the list goes on and on… so several days before the date I have to manage my agenda to fit all meetings in.
As I prefer avoiding crowds, I often suggest hosting the meeting at home.
I’m in charge of the main course and I assign my friends different tasks. Some bring drinks and others dessert and we have the best time, away from the noisy busy places downtown.
Ceci (@CeciliaRatto):
The Friend’s Day is a very special day in Argentina. Everyone hang out and goes out for lunch, snack or dinner and the restaurants become real anthills of people. If you do not have a reservation and do not want to meet in a house, you have no choice but to stand long queues and piles.
My group of friends and I are generally quite distracted. We always remember that the Friend’s Day is coming, just one or two days before it arrives. So close to the date, it is very difficult in Buenos Aires to get place for large groups, so several years we spent our meeting time chatting at the door of a crowded restaurant.
With the passage of time, my friends and I became more selective when hanging out, and for that motive, we have decided not to get together that day and celebrate another day of the month, having a more quiet meeting and avoiding the long waits, the hubbub and the crowding of people. As a result, normally the Friend’s Day I meet only with a friend at home and then, the rest of the month, I meet with everyone else.
In my group of childhood friends, for example, there is one of them that celebrates birthday just the day before at the Friend’s Day, so we always meet that day, and we have the two celebrations together. With my friends from work, I meet some midday in the week. With the group of “mothers of my son’s school”, we meet the following Saturday, and so on with all the others.
I could say that, with the passage of time, in my group of friends, the Friend’s Day was becoming more than a day to celebrate friendship, in a whole month of festivities. More than Friend’s Day, I say that I celebrate the “Friend’s month”!
Jesi (@Jesi):
Friend’s Day has always been a fun day, and a great excuse to hang out with friends letting them know how much you appreciate them. It is a big tradition that everyone knows about.
Back in what is elementary school here, I remember always taking to school sweets to give my classmates, my preference was to take a big bag of lollipops and then additional small gifts for my best friends.
The small gifts were usually products sold specifically for the occasion. When Friend’s Day is approaching some stores start selling small decorations that say “Happy Friends Day” or “Best Friends Forever”, or are about friendship in some way. For example, my best friend at the time once gave me a piggy bank that was shaped as a heart, with two girls depicting us. I still have it and appreciate it.
All through high school friend’s days with my classmates were about having lunch, having a picnic at parks, or just hanging out in a house…
At work, there can be planned gifts in many ways, the most common way is the invisible friend Caro mentioned.
Currently for me and all through my life with friends outside of school and work, it has been mostly about just hanging out anywhere: In a house, restaurant, or even can be about going to the cinema if there’s a good movie everyone wants to watch.
It’s all about celebrating friendship and the place, and even the date, don’t matter all that much.
Farid (@FaridMonti):
Today we celebrate Friend’s Day in Argentina. How many friends do you have? Brazilian singer Roberto Carlos says he has a million friends. Are you like him?
Connect has many pros, and one of them is that it’s here you can meet thousands of Local Guides. You can make new friends besides distance or language, my two great friends as you might know are Karen and Ermes. I started talking to them as soon as I joined Connect, which has recently turned 3 years old! First posting comments in their posts and then more frequently, and now we chat almost every day.
Then we have friends from our childhood, but sometimes life draws you apart. You change and grow, and they are rarely on your current contact list, sadly that’s not my case.
Friends from work or colleagues are those you sometimes meet for an asado or football match.
At the top of the list are your close friends, those you can always count on to share your secrets and problems. Sometimes someone who is family becomes this type of friend, like a brother can turn into a close friend when you are adults. Of these you only have very few, the ones we call here “amigos de fierro” (“friends made of steel” ). They’re always there for you, lending you a helping hand, telling you “c’mon, how could you!?!”, or simply listening for hours, in your happiest or saddest days.
I call those people the gems of life, the ones who are rarely found. And when you do, they’re the ones to spend Friend’s Day with.
Finally, the new friends you make, first chit chatting, then finding common ground or doing things together and suddenly you find yourself talking to them every day, wishing them a great day with a “Good morning! :-)” text or planning on your next meeting.
That’s what #TeamArgentina is to me now, we’re writing new chapters daily in the book of life and we don’t know how this goes on, but I’m sure it’ll be fun!
‘When it rains I share my umbrella, if I don’t have one, I share the rain’
Enrique Febbraro
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