National Pancake Day

What the day is

National Pancake Day is observed on September 26. It is one week after Talk Like a Pirate Day and entirely unrelated to Shrove Tuesday, the much older Pancake Day covered on its own entry, or to IHOP's separate charity promotion in late February or March, which is covered on its own entry too. All three share a name and nothing else.

Origin and background

This one began life in 2005 as Lumberjack Day, invented by Marianne Ways and Colleen AF Venable as, by their own account, little more than an excuse to eat pancakes and waffles with friends. Talk Like a Pirate Day had already claimed September 19 and was wearing thin as a bit, so the following week got a new one built around flannel, syrup and the general idea of a lumberjack's breakfast.

It later passed into the hands of National Day Calendar, a company that catalogues and in many cases registers these observances, sometimes for a fee from a sponsor and sometimes simply by adopting one that already existed. Somewhere in that process the lumberjack framing fell away and the date kept its food but lost its joke, becoming simply National Pancake Day. Several restaurant chains, including Cracker Barrel, Huddle House and Perkins, now run promotions on it, independently of IHOP's own event five or six months earlier.

The result is a minor but genuine cataloguing problem. Three different organizations, on three different dates, each have a legitimate claim to a name containing the words National Pancake Day, and a search engine or a calendar app has no reliable way to know which one a given mention refers to.

None of this bears on the food itself, which does not care how many holidays claim it.

How to take part

• Check which restaurant near you is actually running a promotion before showing up expecting one.
• Read about Lumberjack Day, the much better name this used to have.
• Keep the three pancake observances straight: this one, Shrove Tuesday, and IHOP's.
• Make a stack at home. It needs no sponsor and no registration.