National Say It Now Day Date in the current year: December 17, 2025

Gratitude is both a feeling of appreciation by a recipient of another’s kindness and an expression of this feeling. Psychological research has shown that gratitude can positively affect mood, reduce stress, and improve overall mental and physical well-being. On average, people are comfortable expressing their gratitude to others suffer fewer stress-related health problems, enjoy stronger and more fulfilling personal and professional relationships, and are generally happier.

Grateful people tend to feel more in control of their lives, have better self-esteem and self-acceptance, experience personal growth, use more constructive coping strategies when faced with hardships and challenges, and are more level-headed when making important decisions and solving problems. Gratitude has also been linked to altruism, generosity, and empathy.

The Say It Now movement was created to encourage people to practice gratitude. It was started by Walter Green of San Diego, a former CEO of Harrison Conference Services, who was inspired by two pivotal life experiences. The first was Green’s journey across the United States and even abroad to visit 44 people who had impacted his life and personally express his gratitude to them. Green chronicled his journey in the book This Is the Moment!: How One Man’s Yearlong Journey Captured the Power of Extraordinary Gratitude, published in 2010.

The second experience was a conversation with a friend, who asked Green to organize a celebration of his life after he died. After giving it some thought, Green realized that the idea bothered him for some reason and politely declined. Instead, he convinced his friend to have a living tribute on his next birthday, where his friends and family would tell him how much he meant to them and how grateful they were to have him in their lives.

Green’s journey and his friend’s moving living tribute were such enriching experiences that Green committed to making living tributes commonplace and officially launched the Say It Now movement in 2022. The idea behind the movement is to encourage people to share their gratitude and appreciation for others.

National Say It Now Day was created in 2024 by Legacy+ and National Day Calendar to commemorate Walter Green’s birthday, promote the Say It Now movement, and give people an opportunity to express gratitude to their loved ones. There are many ways to participate in the celebration: call your loved ones to let them know you are grateful to have them in your life, write them letters, take them out to dinner, send them tokens of appreciation, host a living tribute to someone who has changed your life for the better, etc. And don’t forget to post about the holiday on social media using the hashtag #NationalSayItNowDay to spread the word and encourage others to participate.