September 20 Holidays

Wife Appreciation Day was created to encourage spouses to explicitly recognize and celebrate the domestic, emotional, and professional contributions of their wives — one dedicated day of gratitude in a year of shared labor. National Fried Rice Day celebrates the stir-fried rice dish — one of the oldest Chinese cooking techniques, documented in Yangzhou during the Sui dynasty (589–618 CE) — now the world’s most adapted comfort food, with distinct regional variants in Japanese, Thai, Korean, Indonesian, and West African cuisines. National Punch Day celebrates the mixed bowl beverage that the British East India Company brought to Europe from India in the 17th century — the word “punch” derives from the Hindi “pañc,” meaning five, for the original five ingredients: alcohol, sugar, lemon, water, and tea. National Queso Day celebrates the molten cheese dip that Tex-Mex restaurants pioneered and that Americans consume in quantities that would astonish the dairy farmers who produced the underlying cheddar.