Is National Pie Day the same as Pi Day?

No. Pi Day is the mathematics day on March 14, while National Pie Day falls on January 23 and is about the pastry.

Why is National Pie Day on January 23?

January 23 was Charlie Papazian's birthday, and by the accounts of the Denver Post and of the day's former spokesperson he declared it National Pie Day in a Boulder classroom in the 1970s. No document from that decade has been located, and the earliest independent trace found is the 1983 Chase's Calendar of Events edition.

Is National Pie Day on January 23 or December 1?

January 23 is the date the American Pie Council promotes and the one the day is known by. Newsweek has reported a second National Pie Day on December 1, and no source located explains who set it or why.

National Pie Day

Next celebratedSaturday, January 23, 2027

National Pie Day is for the dessert that turns up at every family table and never needs an occasion. Bake one, serve it warm, and let everyone argue about the best filling.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEJanuary 23

OBSERVED INUnited States

CATEGORYFood

SUBCATEGORYDesserts

ORIGIN

Individual Initiative

FOUNDING ENTITY

Charlie Papazian

FIRST OBSERVED

~1975

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The date is one man's birthday.

Charlie Papazian, a former nuclear engineer teaching at a Boulder, Colorado elementary school, told his class he wanted pie rather than cake for his birthday and declared that birthday, January 23, to be National Pie Day; the Denver Post dates that classroom declaration to the mid-1970s. He registered it with Chase's Calendar of Events, and because registration required a sponsoring organization he invented one, the American Pie Council, and gave his own home phone number.

INTRO

The pie council that started as a phone number

The American Pie Council did not exist when National Pie Day was registered. It was a name written on a form, next to a Boulder home telephone number.

The council exists now. It works out of Lake Forest, Illinois, and still promotes the day it was invented to sponsor.

Everything else about the day reaches us at second hand. The founding is told by a Colorado daily, by a homebrewing magazine, and by the man who spoke for the day each January.

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See who celebrated this year, and browse offers from past years.

Offers wrapped for 2026

National Pie Day ran on January 23. Here’s who celebrated with offers this year.

3 brands offered a deal this year

Peggy Jean's Pies

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See past offers

ORIGINS

Pie Day history

INTRODUCTION

Pie has the older paper trail by a distance. The Middle English Dictionary opens its entry for the word on a 1303 account roll from Bolton, which records grain spent "in pyis et pastellis". Chaucer's Cook could "wel bake a pye".

National Pie Day has almost none. It was declared out loud in a classroom, and its printed record starts years afterwards.

CHAPTER 01

A birthday, and a form that wanted a sponsor

John Lehndorff, who says Charlie Papazian asked him to stand in as the day's spokesperson each January, has written it twice, a decade apart. It began as a class project at a Boulder elementary school, where pupils offered to bake their teacher a birthday cake.

"Thanks, but I don't like cake. I like birthday pie," Papazian told them, and January 23 became National Pie Day. Registering it with Chase's Calendar of Events required a sponsoring organization, so he wrote in the American Pie Council and his home telephone number.

Lehndorff then made the fiction real. Its first office was his house on Concord Avenue, where the Pie Times newsletter began under the slogan "In crust we trust."

CHAPTER 02

Nothing in print for years

The earliest Chase's edition in HathiTrust's full-text index to carry the phrase is the 1983 volume, and it appears in every edition through 2000. The 1978 through 1981 editions are in that index and empty, the years a mid-1970s registration would sit in.

In the California Digital Newspaper Collection the phrase draws nothing between 1975 and 1986, a window in which "apple pie" returns 15,721 hits. Its first hit there is a Lucerne Valley newspaper in 1987.

CHAPTER 03

Where "since 1986" came from

One sentence follows the day everywhere: "Since 1986, National Pie Day is sponsored by the American Pie Council." It entered English Wikipedia in a single edit on 24 January 2014, which replaced a line crediting the council with starting the day and hung the year on the citation that line already carried.

That citation is the council's own membership page, and the capture archived three weeks later contains no 1986 anywhere. What it claims instead is that the APC "even designated and registered National Pie Day...January 23rd." Newsweek passed the year on in 2021, hedged as "apparently".

TIMELINE

Timeline

Pie enters the written record

An account roll from Bolton records grain spent in pyis et pastellis, the first dated use of the word that the Middle English Dictionary prints.

London bars the pie bakers

A London document names piebakere among the trades forbidden to go out and meet victuals coming towards the City.

An American cookbook advertises pies

A Hartford printing of Amelia Simmons's American Cookery names pies on its title page and gives two Pompkin recipes baked in pastry.

The phrase reaches Chase's

This is the earliest Chase's Calendar of Events edition in HathiTrust's full-text index to carry National Pie Day.

A California newspaper prints it

The Lucerne Valley Leader of 21 January carries the earliest appearance of the phrase in the California Digital Newspaper Collection.

The 1986 year enters Wikipedia

A Wikipedia edit on 24 January wrote that the American Pie Council had sponsored the day since 1986, citing an APC page whose capture three weeks later contains no such year.

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Pie Day

Medieval cooks called the crust a coffyn

The recipe collection Forme of Cury tells the cook to "Make a Coffyn as to a pye". Piers Plowman has cooks and their boys crying "hote pyes, hote" in the street.

Pie baking was a recorded surname by 1320

The Middle English Dictionary records Petr. Piebakere in 1320, Adam le Piemakere in 1332 and Petronilla Pyemaker in 1357.

Vermont wrote a serving rule it never codified

Act No. 15 of 1999 made apple pie the state pie of Vermont. A second section asked anyone serving it to make a good faith effort at milk, cheddar or ice cream, and that section never reached the statute books.

Colorado ran a pie festival from 1899

Longmont held Pumpkin Pie Days from 1899 until 1913, serving up to 1,000 pumpkin pies plus coffee and apple cider, according to the St. Vrain Historical Society.

The day's founder is better known for beer

Charlie Papazian founded the American Homebrewers Association in Boulder in 1978, co-founded the Great American Beer Festival and wrote The Complete Joy of Homebrewing.

Three different years are attached to the pie council

Its executive director told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2010 that the council was founded in 1983. The Wikipedia line that gave the day its sponsorship year says 1986, and the council's own About page today is headed "Championing Pie Excellence Since 1995".

Registration required an organization so he invented the American Pie Council, and a phone number, his own.

John LehndorffFormer official spokesperson for National Pie Day, writing in Boulder Weekly

the triangle that rounds out a square meal

Charlie PapazianFounder of National Pie Day, on pie, as reported by the Boulder Reporting Lab

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Pie Day

BROADCAST

A celebration of all things baked in a crust, NPR said.

NPR ran a segment on 18 January 2007 that listed the day and described it as a celebration of all things baked in a crust. The same piece quoted, from what it identified as a 1902 New York Times article, the line that pie is the food of the heroic.

STATUS

No federal instrument turns up in the indexes

The Federal Register's API returns no document naming National Pie Day, and no bill or resolution about the day was located on GovTrack. The March 14 mathematics day does have one, since the House agreed to H.Res. 224 supporting the designation of Pi Day on 12 March 2009.

COMPETITION

The day's steward runs a national contest

The American Pie Council's National Pie Championships reached their 29th edition on 8 and 9 April 2026 at the Caribe Royale Hotel in Orlando, Florida. Entries come from commercial, professional and amateur pie makers across North America.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Pie Day

Bake it at home rather than buying one

The day's former spokesperson has objected to supermarkets discounting manufactured pies for January 23, writing that homemade pie on a birthday was the whole point. A rough crust out of your own oven is closer to what the day started as.

SERVE

Serve a slice the way Vermont asks

Vermont's apple pie act names three accompaniments and asks for one of them beside a slice. Put all three on the table and let people choose.

COOK

Cook a pumpkin pie from a 1799 book

Amelia Simmons's American Cookery gives two Pompkin recipes, one laid into paste and chequered with a dough spur, the other simply in a crust. The scanned copy is free to read at the Internet Archive.

WORK

Work through the pie council's own list

The American Pie Council publishes a baker's dozen ways to celebrate on January 23. Pick the suggestion you would never have reached on your own.

LOOK

Look up how the word reached English

The dictionary prints the food sense of pie with its dated quotations, from a 1303 account roll onward. The entry is open to read at the Middle English Compendium.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Pie Day?

1 / 6

According to the day's former official spokesperson, what was the American Pie Council when National Pie Day was registered?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance: the Federal Register's API carries no document naming it, and January 23 is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

22sources

14primary records

13independently dated

Primary records

Middle English Compendium, University of Michigan2026-07-28

Middle English Dictionary entry for pie, the food sense

Dated quotations for the word pie, from a 1303 account roll onward.