National Doughnut Dayay

It's #NationalDonutDay! Please celebrate responsibly!

Whether you like them jelly-filled, powdered or glazed, you now have a good excuse (if you needed one) to enjoy the sweet treats.

National Doughnut Day isn't a ploy by doughnut shops to get you in their doors. Its roots date back to World War I, when hundreds of Salvation Army officers, aiming to comfort U.S. troops serving in Europe, cooked and served doughnuts to the soldiers

The first National Doughnut Day was celebrated in 1938.

Each year, the United States pauses on the first Friday in June to observe perhaps our most glazed commemoration: National Doughnut* Day.

Why is there a National Doughnut Day?  You are probably not even asking this question, because there’s a National Everything Day, with no topic, inanimate object or cartoon character too small to warrant a full 24-hour celebration of their existence. (Thursday was National Hug Your Cat Day, but you already knew that, because you spent the day carefully learning just how to best hug your cat.)

The Salvation Army says the first National Doughnut Day was celebrated in 1938. That event was held in Chicago to raise money for and bring attention to the organization’s social service programs during the Great Depression. They were also honoring the Salvation Army’s “Doughnut Girls” or “Doughnut Lassies” — their terms, not mine — who had handed out doughnuts in the trenches during World War I.

Now, more than 75 years later, we celebrate with free giveaways (though some aren’t really “free). You can get your free doughnut (only with the purchase of a drink) at Dunkin’ Donuts, or you can get a free doughnut at Krispy Kreme, you can get free doughnuts at Tim Hortons (the Canadian staple has 870 locations in the U.S., apparently). Or, if you’re so inclined, you can try to make your own doughnuts.

* — Our official style here is “doughnut,” not “donut,” and you can quibble with this all you want, but quite frankly life is short and our time on Earth is finite and so we are going to contemplate this issue for precisely as long as it takes us to finish this sentence and not a second longer.

WANT A BITE? As you're getting ready to fire up that grill today, chew on this: The Krispy Kreme triple cheeseburger will make its debut at the upcoming San Diego County Fair. The Krispy Kreme triple cheeseburger puts three, all beef patties in the middle of two glazed doughnut buns. As you can guess, the belt buster will cost you a full day's worth of calories. It is estimated it will take four to six hours to sweat out at the gym.Would you try it?

 

If that's is not enough, click here for a chance to win an entire year of free doughnuts from Entenmann's. Additionally, if you "like" their Facebook page by June 15, they will donate $1 to the Salvation Army.