Let me put on my marketing consultant hat (ow! ow! I thought I retired from this!) You can take this with as many grains of salt as you want but here goes:
1. You can declare any date a "holiday" on social media. The date does not need any significance. However, having a reason why this date was chosen makes a convenient hook for starting the conversation and getting peoples' attention.
2. You can almost certainly convince a member of Congress to introduce a resolution declaring anything an official national holiday, and it will be approved as routine. A representative from Kentucky would be an obvious person to ask.
3. Pick a date that works for your objectives. Are you looking for a good date to hold a festival (summer or early fall)? A date for scholars to argue about (the first documented dulcimer build)? Do you want to trigger an immediate deep dive into history (Ed Thomas)? Or introduce dulcimers to schoolchildren and community groups in a way that's not too intimidating and feels relevant?
4. Birthdays make people feel good. Nobody celebrates the day somebody died unless it's the Wicked Witch of the East. Whom nobody remembers.
5. Piggybacking an established related event, like Music on The Porch Day, will gain you no visibility. Somebody playing dulcimer on a day when lots of people are playing lots of other instruments will not make the dulcimer stand out.
6. Stepping into a season crowded with other holidays will gain you no visibility -- unless you can incorporate your event into other events that would otherwise not have dulcimers. This is leveraging our synergies -- or synergizing our leverage, depending on the preferred buzzword of the moment. Like I said, marketing.
That's my consulting advice, since consultants never tell you what to do, they only spout generalities and ask questions! Now returning to my preferred persona as a civilian member of FOTMD, I will write a post about why December 8 is a perfect date for Dulcimer Day.
