Remember on Jolly Monday I told you there would be a surprise on Friday?  Well … it’s Friday!  And … {🥁 Drumroll 🥁} it is World Smile Day!  Yes, there really is such a thing … let me tell you just a bit about it.

You know those cute smiley emoticons  🙂 that most of us use multiple times a day to convey mirth or joy?  Well, those icons have a history and that history is linked to World Smile Day … and naturally, I am about to tell you a bit about the history behind the smiley and the day.

The year was 1963.  Harvey Ball was a commercial artist who had started his own company, Harvey Ball Advertising in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1959.  A local company, State Mutual Life Assurance Company, hired Ball to come up with an image to increase employee morale which was at an all-time low following a recent merger.  What he created was a smiley face, with one eye bigger than the other. In less than ten minutes, Harvey Ball came up with the simple yet world-changing smiley face. The simplicity of the image brought smiles to the faces of the executives, who paid him a whopping $45 for his creation.  That image went on to become the most recognizable symbol of good will and good cheer on the planet.

That $45 was the only financial reward Harvey ever saw from his creation, but here’s the neat thing about Harvey … he didn’t care.  According to his son, he always said, “Hey, I can only eat one steak at a time, drive one car at a time.”  Now that’s an attitude I’d surely like to see more businessmen have!

Anyway, time went by, and the smiley face caught on like wildfire. By 1971, the smiley face was the hottest selling image in the country: an estimated fifty million smiley buttons alone had been sold, and the image appeared on countless other products as well. But Harvey Ball became concerned about the over-commercialization of his symbol, and how its original meaning and intent had become lost in the constant repetition of the marketplace.  And of that concern was born World Smile Day!  Harvey felt that all of us should devote one day each year to smiles and kind acts throughout the world.

Harvey declared that the first Friday in October each year would henceforth be World Smile Day, and thus it has been since the first one in 1999, not just in Worcester, Massachusetts, and not just in the U.S., but around the world!  Take a look …

Sadly, Harvey died two years later, but even today his legacy lives on, not just in the form of recognition of World Smile Day, but in the Harvey Ball World Smile Foundation that was created to honour his name and his memory.  The Foundation is a non-profit charitable trust that supports children’s causes. The group licenses Smileys and organizes World Smile Day, which takes place on the first Friday of October each year and is a day dedicated to “good cheer and good works”. The catchphrase for the day is “Do an act of kindness – help one person smile”.  I like that, don’t you?

Now, we see those smileys just about every day, in a wide variety of colours and in the last few years there is an entire encyclopedia of smileys, some of which are doing almost everything but smiling! 😏 🙄 😬 🤤 But Harvey’s original smiley is unique, distinguishable from all the others.  A Harvey Ball smiley face can be identified by three distinguishing features: Narrow oval eyes (with the one on the right slightly larger than the one on the left), a bright sunny yellow color, and a mouth that is not a perfect arc, which has been claimed to be similar to a “Mona Lisa Mouth”. The face has creases at the sides of the mouth, and the mouth is slightly off-center (with the right side a little higher than the left) and the right side of the mouth is a slightly thicker than on the left.And now that you know the origin of the smiley, and you know that today is World Smile Day, how ‘bout going out there and doing just one small kindness for someone?  Anything … help a neighbor carry in his or her groceries, buy a friend lunch, help an elderly person across the street or up the stairs, just something … anything.  You know what … you’ll bring a smile to that person’s face, but since smiles are contagious, you’ll get a smile back in return.  Oh, and by the way folks … in case you need an extra, I’ve left a basket of smileys by the door … feel free to take one … better yet, take two and share one!

This post is dedicated to our friend Ellen, who told me about World Smile Day last weekend, and then reminded me last night, which was fortuitous, for I had forgotten.  This one’s for you, Ellen.