Doughnut aficionados might be delighted that there are two different days dedicated to doughnuts. There is National Donut Day – a holiday that’s celebrated on the first Friday of every June, and there’s National Doughnut Day that’s celebrated on November 5th every year.

Regardless of whether a person celebrates just one of these holidays or both of them, there is one certain thing. Doughnuts (or donuts as they are spelled by popular culture) are a treat that just about everyone enjoys.

The History Of National Doughnut Day

Since there are two National Doughnut Days, it’s probably a good idea to talk about how each one of them started. And we’ll start with the one that falls on the first Friday of every June. This holiday began during World War I. This is when the Salvation Army dispatched over 250+ women to France’s front lines to deliver food to the soldiers.

When the women arrived in France, they noticed that it was very easy for them to fry up donuts in army helmets and that the shape of the helmet allowed up to seven donuts at a time to be fried up. Twenty years later, in 1938, as the Salvation Army began to look for ways to raise awareness and money about the causes they support, they decided to create a National Donut Day to honor the women who delivered donuts to troops.

As a result, National Donut Day was created. The second National Doughnut Day, the one that falls on November 5th, is a little bit harder to find out about. That’s because no one really knows the origins of this holiday.

Mentions of it go back in copies of Ladies Home Journal printed during the 1930s, but there aren’t very many more mentions of it beyond that. Some people have speculated that the day was probably created by a retail outlet to drive more customers to their Veteran’s Day sales, but no one knows for sure.

The History Of Doughnuts

Although no one knows for certain when doughnuts were invented, they are as mentioned as far back as 1809. This is when Washington Irving mentioned in the book “A History Of New York—From The Beginning Of The World To The End Of The Dutch Dynasty,” otherwise known as Diedrich Knickerbocker’s History of New York, a dessert called dough-nuts.

This dessert consisted of sweetened dought that was fried in hogs-fat and was known both as doughnuts and as Oly Koeks. As such, it can probably be stated that donuts were first brought to the U.S via Dutch immigrants.

How Is National Doughnut Day Celebrated?

As many people will probably note, National Doughnut Day (or is it days) is usually celebrated by a person enjoying their favorite day. Regardless of whether it’s the June holiday or the November holiday, many doughnut chains also give away doughnuts on both of these days.