Galentine's Day is a global holiday that celebrates women's friendship. Galentine's Day is typically marked as February 13, but can be observed any day. Galentine's Day events are typically all-female occasions of mutual "empowerment...a reminder for women to support and uplift one another." The concept and name of the holiday was imagined into existence by '' Parks and Recreation'' in the eponymous episode Galentine's Day, with the episode being written by Aisha Muharrar. The sitcom's main character

Leslie Knope Leslie Barbara Knope ( ) is a fictional character portrayed by Amy Poehler and the main protagonist of the NBC sitcom '' Parks and Recreation''. For most of the show's run, she serves as deputy director of the Parks and Recreation Department of ...

(played by

Amy Poehler Amy Meredith Poehler ( ; born September 16, 1971) is an American actress and comedian. Known for her roles in sketch comedy, sitcoms and comedy films, she has earned acclaim and several accolades including a Primetime Emmy Award (out of 26 nom ...

) is the originator of the holiday. Jumping from fiction to real life, the occasion is well known enough that Galentine's Day merchandise is now sold at mainstream outlets like

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...

Party City New AmScan PC LLC formerly, Party City Holdco Inc. is an American chain of party supply stores founded in 1986 by Steve Mandell in East Hanover, New Jersey. Party City's headquarters are in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. Party City was the largest ...

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

and

Etsy Etsy, Inc. is an American e-commerce company with an emphasis on the selling of handmade or vintage items and craft supplies. These items fall under a wide range of categories, including jewelry, bags, clothing, home decor, religious items, furni ...

. Retailers also use the holiday as a pretext for organizing

pop-up shop Pop-up retail, also known as pop-up store (pop-up shop in the UK, Australia and Ireland) or flash retailing, is a trend of opening short-term sales spaces that last for days to weeks before closing down, often to latch onto a fad or scheduled e ...

s marketing products to female customers. Many resorts and restaurants offer Galentine's themed package deals. An advice column in ''

The Sunday Telegraph ''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, first published on 5 February 1961 and published by the Telegraph Media Group, a division of Press Holdings. It is the sister paper of ''The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Tele ...

'' described the

protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics) Protocol originally (in Late Middle English, c. 15th century) meant the minutes or logbook taken at a meeting, upon which an agreement was based. The term now commonly refers to ...

of Galentine's Day:

Michelle Obama Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama ( Robinson; born January 17, 1964) is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, being married to Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United Stat ...

posted a photo on her

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

and

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

celebrating Galentine's Day in 2020. The caption read, The official ''Parks & Recreation'' Twitter account replied with a

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...

of Leslie Knope expressing approval.

References

{{reflist Women's culture Unofficial observances February observances

See also

References