Occasionally, on the local news, I’ll hear the anchor mention a holiday I have never heard of. There’s a National Squirrel Appreciation Day (January 21), National Lemonade Day (August 20), and there’s even a holiday for apples: Apple Day (September 25), celebrated in Sweden. There seems to be a day for everything, including pencils. Yes, you read that correctly: pencils.

Pencil Day is celebrated on March 30, and it honors an often overlooked writing utensil. With so much technology available to us, many of us choose to type and text rather than handwrite anything anymore. When we do put pen to paper, that’s usually what it is: a pen. The modern pencil has been with us since 1795, when scientist Nicholas-Jacques Conte created it. Things took a dramatic turn for the pencil, when Hymen Lipman added an eraser to it’s end in 1858. Now, we have all sorts of pencils: drawing pencils, colored pencils, and even mechanical pencil you operate with the click of a button. There are so many brands to choose from: Skilcraft, Pentel, Papermate, and Faber-Castel, just to name a few. My personal favorite brand: Ticonderoga. Those things write incredibly smooth and they are the absolute BOMB (okay, I’m geeking out over a pencil, sorry).

While I like to type and make notes on my phone, nothing beats writing something by hand. I use pens (I’m a pen fanatic, by the way. I’ll spend money on a Cross Ball Point pen before I’ll buy a shirt or a pair of jeans…or food) but I also use pencils. I draw with them, and I also use them to draft some of my manuscripts. Pencils give us more room for growth as artists and writers, because what they create isn’t necessarily permanent, and can be erased, giving us a chance to make corrections and even start over.

How can you celebrate Pencil Day? Grab a pencil! If you would like to learn more about Pencil Day, the National Day Calendar has some info on their website, found here.

Happy writing, everyone!