IN recent years, some of our months have been ‘hijacked’.

So, instead of October, we have ‘Stoptober’ and November becomes ‘Movember’.

This in itself isn’t a bad thing at all.

Both months have been transformed as part of promotions to encourage better health by quitting smoking or by raising money for charity by growing facial hair. It’s all good.

What really does my head in is the seemingly never ending National (Insert Name Here) Days that crop up, well, virtually every day.

Just last week it was, apparently, National Coffee Day - presumably established by coffee makers to sell their products.

Every day, journalists’ inboxes across the world are flooded with press releases riding on the back of the latest National Day.

Some are sensible and quite rightly raise awareness of otherwise under-discussed topics.

But I’m sorry, the vast majority are so daft, the mind boggles.

As a service to you, dear reader, I decided to have a look at what days were coming up in October.

This will give you plenty of warning, so you can plan your celebrations in advance and make sure you are fully prepared. You’re welcome, by the way.

I’m sure all the women reading this will be gutted if they wake up on Sunday and realise they missed that it was National No Bra Day the previous day.

That’s not all though. Tomorrow is also National Yorkshire Pudding Day, National Chess Day and National Train Your Brain Day.

There are so many National Days now that they outnumber the amount of days in a year.

As a result, most days have several options and you can turn that to your advantage.

So, if you would rather not have freedom for your chest tomorrow, you could ignore that it is National No Bra Day, but do so while eating a Yorkshire Pudding, thus celebrating at least one of the special days.

October 25 is particularly weird.

It is National Greasy Food Day, and Chucky the Notorious Killer Doll Day (that’s the creepy toy from the Child’s Play movies). Based on the choice, I don’t think I will be celebrating anything that day.

Many of the days I spotted on the ‘National Days’ website were USA centric. Today is National Gumbo Day. October 23 is National Boston Cream Pie Day and October 27 National American Beer Day.

Obviously, October 31 is Halloween.

But did you know that on the same day, it is National Doorbell Day.

That’s great news for Trick or Treaters visiting their neighbours - they can ring instead of knocking and kill two birds with one stone.

I wondered whether there might be National Nothing to Celebrate Day and, guess what, there is . . . kind of.

You can scoff all you like at the Yanks for their National Kick Butt Day which was apparently on Monday, but in 1973 they introduced National Nothing Day, which is observed on January 16 annually.

It was created to provide Americans with one National Day when they don’t have to celebrate, observe or honour anything.

It almost makes you want to have a National What a Great Idea Day.

But that would really defeat the object.