Friend's Day: Dia del Amigo

July 20th was "Friend's Day"--el Día del Amigo--in the Spanish-speaking world, and it is taken quite seriously, as are friendships. I attended five separate parties over the weekend, given that one has varying groups of friends, and this was in a city not my own!

The holiday--not an official one--was invented here in Argentina thirty years ago. The date was chosen because it was the anniversary of humankind's first landing on the moon. The rationale was that on that day, all of us here on Earth were friends of the three astronauts.

"Friends" should mean something more than the name of a situation comedy. Friends follow family in intimacy and are those with whom we choose to be close, so setting aside a special day to honor them is... well, not at all a bad idea.

Argentines are a very hospitable people and far less inhibited about showing affection than tends to be the case with those of us of northern European ancestry. It is customary to greet female friends and even new acquaintances with a kiss on the cheek, and in some provinces a male friend as well, though there is nothing "romantic" about this practice.

This pleasant little holiday, cause for festivities and reunions, is the sort of thing that makes living in the Southern Cone--and this country in particular--a pleasure.

I have made many friends over he course of the five years I have been here, friends from all walks of life and in disparate parts of this vast country. Over the weekend, in Santiago del Estero, I visited with some thirty or more, and came home with new addresses and promises (which I am sure will be kept) of future get-togethers there and at my home. The nearly seven hour drive was well worth it.

I salute my friends, here and elsewhere, old and new, living and deceased, spread far and wide over the surface of this Earth, , of many colors, creeds, countries and ways of life. I have been blessed to know these people and would love it if it were possible to have them all together at a great Friend's Day party, but that, I suspect, will have to wait for the hereafter.

And if we have not met, my reader friend, I wish you as well a...

Happy Friend's Day!