Today is May 22nd and on this day in history, we pause to acknowledge something that seems almost absurdly modest: National Vanilla Pudding Day. Not the signing of treaties or the fall of empires, but the celebration of a dessert that most people barely think about until they’re spooning it from a little plastic cup.
Vanilla pudding sits in that strange territory of foods that exist without fanfare. It’s not chocolate’s dramatic cousin or strawberry’s bright-eyed sibling. Vanilla just is—smooth, pale, unassuming. The kind of thing your grandmother made on Tuesday afternoons when nothing else was happening, when the light came slanted through kitchen windows and time moved like honey.
The word “vanilla” has become synonymous with plain, ordinary, unremarkable. We use it to describe anything lacking excitement or distinction. But here’s what gets overlooked: vanilla beans come from orchids that bloom for just one day. These flowers open at dawn in tropical places most of us will never see, and if they aren’t pollinated by noon, that’s it. The moment passes. Someone has to catch that single day, hand-pollinate each bloom, then wait months for the pods to develop their complex flavor.
Nothing plain about that.
Pudding itself carries the weight of comfort in ways we don’t often examine. It’s soft food, nursery food, the kind of thing you eat when you’re sick or sad or just need something gentle. Every culture has its version—rice pudding in Scandinavia, flan in Spain, kheer in India. We’ve been mixing milk and sweetness and patience for thousands of years, creating something that slides down easy when the world feels too sharp.
On this manufactured holiday, dedicated to something so humble it barely registers as special, maybe we’re being reminded that celebration doesn’t require grandeur. The small rituals matter too. The Tuesday afternoon puddings. The unremarkable moments that somehow hold us together between the big events that make it into history books.
Vanilla pudding doesn’t demand attention or analysis. It just sits there, willing to be whatever you need it to be—dessert, comfort, memory, the taste of someone’s kitchen on a random afternoon when everything felt safe. In a world that insists on complexity and constant stimulation, there’s something quietly revolutionary about choosing simple sweetness, about finding satisfaction in the spaces between excitement.
Sometimes the most profound thing you can do is appreciate what’s right in front of you, even if it’s just vanilla.
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