National Call a Friend Day

Christmas is over and New Year’s is on its way. But in the meantime, December 28 is National Call a Friend Day! Between the stress of the daily grind at work, the needs of your family, and ensuring you have a little time for yourself, our lives can get awfully hectic. National Call a Friend Day reminds us all to take a few minutes, pick up the phone, and call that friend you’ve been meaning to get back in touch with. In modern times, technology has the capacity to unite us more than ever before. The internet isn’t fazed by distance, time zones, or how much money you have in the bank. But in our day to day lives of whizzing from one task to the next (or even multi-tasking on all our projects at once), technology often has the opposite effect. Checking emails, answering texts, responding to Facebook notifications, and other tech-based tasks can fill up our lives and actually make us feel less connected to the people we’re spending all our time connecting with! So with the holiday season rapidly drawing to a close this year, make an effort on December 28 to reach out with a phone call and connect, voice to voice, with a good friend.

What, there’s a National Call a Friend Day? Make the most of this meaningful holiday with our best tips and gift ideas. Check out 100 Birthday Wishes for Your Best Friend.

National Short Film Day

The birth of the motion picture industry is celebrated on National Short Film Day on December 28. In particular, this holiday commemorates the event when a public audience viewed a series of short films for the first time ever. Since then, people have experienced love, tragedy, and drama through movies. Accessible to all, and the best in visual entertainment, movies allow viewers to live vicariously through different characters and stories. 

National Download Day

December 28 is National Download Day. Once slow and cumbersome, smartphones have become a ubiquitous part of our lives. It’s hard to imagine going anywhere without our phones, which now also serve as cameras, maps, guidebooks, banks, personal assistants, and entertainment centers.

Most of these extra functions are accessed through downloadable apps — programs designed for mobile phones that streamline specific functions. You can find thousands of free and paid apps for your mobile device including productivity boosters, games, photo editing software, and shopping apps. You can even connect apps to wearable technology to monitor your heart rate, distance walked, and more.