Monkey Day

Monkey Day
Also called	International Monkey Day Day of the Monkey
Observed by	People worldwide, including:  Canada  Germany  Mexico  United Kingdom  United States
Celebrations	Costume parties, art shows, zoo visits, webcomic marathons
Date	December 14
Next time	14 December 2014 (2014-12-14)
Frequency	annual

Monkey Day is an unofficial holiday celebrated internationally on December 14.^[1][2][3] While the holiday is mainly about monkeys, it also celebrates other non-human primates such as apes, tarsiers, and lemurs.^[4]

Origins

The holiday was started in 2000 when artist Casey Sorrow, then an art student at Michigan State University, jokingly scribbled Monkey Day on a friend's calendar,^[5][6] and then first celebrated the holiday with other MSU art students.^[6] It gained notoriety when Sorrow and fellow MSU art student Eric Millikin began including Monkey Day in their artwork and Fetus-X comic strips, and began promoting it online along with other artists.^[7] Since then, Monkey Day has been celebrated internationally, across countries such as the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom.^[5][8][9]

Traditional celebrations

Hallmark Cards describes it as the "one day when monkey business is actually encouraged."^[10] The holiday is primarily celebrated with costume parties intended to help draw attention to issues related to simians, including medical research, animal rights, and evolution.^[11] Often there are competitions to see who has the best costumes, who can act like a monkey the longest, or speed knitting of monkey dolls.^[8][12] The holiday cuts across religious boundaries and provides opportunities to share monkey stories and contemplate our simian relatives.^[13][14] Other Monkey Day activities include going on shopping sprees for Paul Frank "Julius the Monkey" fashions, eating Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream, and spending the day at the zoo.^[15]

In 2005, Peter Jackson's King Kong was released on the fifth anniversary of Monkey Day.^[5] King Kong and Planet of the Apes films are popular at Monkey Day parties.^[16] Monkey-themed songs, such as Major Lance's "The Monkey Time", are also part of Monkey Day festivities.^[17]

Often, celebrations involve raising money for primate-related issues.^[16] In 2008, the official Monkey Day celebrations included an art show and silent auction to benefit the Chimps Inc. animal sanctuary; the show and auction included art by human artists as well as paintings from chimps Jackson and Kimie, residents of the sanctuary.^[18][19] The Biddle Gallery in Detroit also celebrated Monkey Day in 2008 with an annual Monkey Day art sale that included a free banana with each purchase.^[20][21] For 2013, the International Primate Protection League is celebrating Monkey Day and raising money for conservation by offering life-drawing classes where people can learn to draw portraits of Gary the gibbon. ^[22][23]

Prominent webcomic artists like Sorrow, Millikin, Rob Balder, and David Malki have created Monkey Day themed comics and artwork.^[7][24]

For Monkey Day 2013, Eric Millikin created a mail art series where he mailed Monkey Day cards to strangers, including Koko the sign-language gorilla and President Barack Obama.^[25] In 2012, USA Weekend published The 12 Stars of Monkey Day, a series of paintings by Millikin that were "in part inspired by the many pioneering space monkeys who rode into the stars on rockets, leading the way for human space flight."^[26]

Sorrow also maintains a comprehensive "Monkeys in the News" blog with stories on topics like monkey attacks, monkey smuggling, and monkey science.^[27] Every Monkey Day, Sorrow's "Monkeys in the News" blog counts down the previous year's "top 10 Monkey and Primate News highlights".^[28]

References

External links

• Monkey Day website