Think your cause deserves a holiday? Reach this guy

Ever wonder how today got to be National Banana Bread Day? (It's also National Tile, Chili, Dog Biscuit and Toast Day)

Or how Frisch's got the first Friday during Lent named National Tartar Sauce Day?

Well, it revolves around a guy in Mandan, North Dakota who turned a hobby into a business. He's become the arbiter of a tradition that's been around at least since Thanksgiving was made a national holiday.

Marlo Anderson always thought that national days were intriguing, and in 2013, he started a website that kept track of them on a calendar. He'd research their origins and history. The calendar became a useful place for journalists or bloggers to find stories. It also became a platform for marketers to use. Of course, marketing was the original intention behind the creation of many themed days, whether they were the idea of trade groups, Congress or the president.

The website grew so popular that Anderson couldn't keep up with it as a hobby any more. Meanwhile, groups were writing to ask how they could get a day designated for their product, charity or ideal on the calendar. Anderson decided to turn the enterprise into a business and become not just the keeper of the calendar, but the arbiter of it.

So the staff at the National Day Calendar now takes applications for day designations and chooses the best ones to put on the calendar.

"We get 18,000 requests a year for all kinds of days," Anderson said. "Of those, we select 30." There has to be a story behind the day and commemorate something people really care about, he said.

Although some national themed days seem random, they all have a backstory, Anderson said. National Bittersweet Chocolate-Covered Almond Day on Nov. 7 is an old one and although it seems ridiculous now, "there was some kind of new technology that allowed these to be made for the first time then," he said.

Anderson said he likes days that come to life spontaneously. "National Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept. 19) started with the people in one bar, then it spread to a neighborhood, to a city, and then it became a national day," he said.

Frisch's application for designation was approved, he said, because it does have a story behind it. Tartar sauce on a burger is a distinctive tradition that makes the sauce worth celebrating, he said.