Cinnamon Roll Day


Cinnamon Roll Day falls on October 4th each year. It is an annual secular holiday in Sweden and Finland that was instituted in 1999 by Kaeth Gardestedt. At the time, she was a project manager for Home Baking Council which was historically a trade group supported by yeast manufacturers, flour producers, sugar manufacturers, and margarine manufacturers, and is now supported by the Dansukker brand of sugar.

Cultural role

The purpose of the celebration is to increase attention on Swedish baking traditions, with a particular focus on cinnamon buns, and to increase the consumption of yeast, flour, sugar and margarine.
The day is promoted through advertising signs in shops and cafés. Cinnamon buns are also featured in community events among Swedes in New Zealand and at the Church of Sweden Abroad.
Most official celebrations of food are minor events that receive little attention, but the Swedish adoption of Cinnamon Roll Day has been unusually popular. According to Swedish ethnologist Jonas Engman at Stockholm University, the popularity is due in part to a crisis of national identity linked to globalization and migration, which has caused people to value things that remind them of positive features from past years.

Date

Cinnamon Roll Day is celebrated on October 4th because the Home Baking Council did not want the day to compete with other food traditions, such as sweet semla buns, which are served in Sweden on Shrove Monday. In Sweden, International Children's Day is celebrated on the first Monday of October. "A thought with Cinnamon Roll Day was that it would be a day of thoughtfulness".