Who created National Short Person Day?

No founder or sponsoring organization is documented in any primary source. The day appears to have spread through social media around 2018.

Is National Short Person Day an official holiday?

No, it is an unofficial observance, not a federal or public holiday, so businesses, schools, and offices stay open as usual.

How much of a person's height is determined by genetics?

In well-fed populations, roughly 80% of the height difference between adults is explained by their genes, with nutrition and health shaping the rest.

What is the shortest height ever recorded for a person?

The shortest adult ever verified was Chandra Bahadur Dangi of Nepal at 54.6 cm, and the shortest living woman is Jyoti Amge of India at 62.8 cm.

National Short Person Day

Next celebratedTuesday, December 22, 2026

A lighthearted observance on December 22 celebrating people of shorter stature and challenging height-based stereotypes.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated March 18, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEDecember 22

OBSERVED INUnited States

CATEGORYFun

SUBCATEGORYSilly

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

~2018

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A social-media day with no documented author.

No documented founder, sponsoring organization, or establishment record has been identified for National Short Person Day. It gained traction through social-media circulation around 2018 and recurs each year on December 22.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday

INTRO

Height is mostly written in your genes, yet whole nations shot up

Your height is roughly 80% written in your genes. By that logic, a nation's average should barely move from one generation to the next.

It moved anyway, and fast. Over the last century, South Korean women grew taller by an average of 20.2 cm, about 8 inches, the biggest height gain of any population on Earth. Their genes did not change. Their childhoods did.

That tension is what National Short Person Day quietly sits on top of. The observance lands on December 22, the day after the gendered National Short Girl Appreciation Day (December 21), and this is the gender-neutral counterpart: a page about the science and culture of how tall we are, and how little of it we choose.

ORIGINS

Short Person Day history

INTRODUCTION

The day itself has almost no paper trail, so the real story here is the body it celebrates. Human height is one of the most studied traits in all of biology, partly because it is easy to measure and partly because it refuses to behave the way people assume.

For most of history, the assumption was that a good diet made you tall and a poor one made you short. The truth is stranger: within any well-fed population, almost all of the difference between two adults traces to their DNA.

CHAPTER 01

What the genome says

Researchers have spent decades hunting for the genes behind it. The trait turned out to be extraordinarily polygenic, scattered across thousands of small effects rather than one or two switches. The largest search to date, published in 2022, scanned roughly 5.4 million people and pinned down 12,111 common DNA variants tied to height.

Even that haul does not explain everything. Those variants account for about 40% of height variation in people of European ancestry, and far less in other groups. The genetics is real and dominant, but the full map is still being drawn.

CHAPTER 02

A century of growing taller

Then there is the part genes cannot explain. The average young adult today stands about 10 cm taller than their great-grandparents, almost entirely because of better nutrition, sanitation, and health in childhood. Genes set the ceiling; the environment decides how close you get to it.

Some short stature is genetic in a different sense. Achondroplasia, the most common cause of disproportionate short stature, comes from a single gene called FGFR3, and most cases appear in children born to average-height parents. It is a reminder that height is many stories, not one.

Those stories include lives lived in full view. Jyoti Amge, recognized by Guinness World Records as the shortest living woman, went on to act on American television. The record is a footnote next to the career.

CHAPTER 03

A day without a birth certificate

The observance that gathers all of this under one date is, by contrast, undocumented. No founder, sponsoring body, or establishment record turns up in any primary source. It surfaced through social-media circulation around 2018 and has recurred each December 22 ever since, the day after the winter solstice and the calendar's shortest day.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Achondroplasia gene identified

Scientists traced the most common form of dwarfism to mutations in a single gene, FGFR3, a landmark in understanding short stature.

Twin study confirms heritability

A comparative study of 30,111 twin pairs across eight countries found adult height to be highly heritable.

Shortest living woman recognized

Jyoti Amge of India was confirmed as the shortest living woman at 62.8 cm on her 18th birthday.

Shortest man ever verified

Chandra Bahadur Dangi of Nepal was measured at 54.6 cm, the shortest adult human ever recorded.

A century of height mapped

A global analysis of 18.6 million people charted how populations grew taller across 100 years.

Near-complete height gene map

The largest height study ever published mapped 12,111 common variants from roughly 5.4 million people.

GOOD TO KNOW

National Short Person Day Around the World

Netherlands

Dutch men are the tallest population on the planet, averaging 182.5 cm.

Latvia and the Baltics

The tallest women cluster in Latvia, the Netherlands, Estonia, and Czechia, all above 168 cm.

Guatemala

Guatemalan women are the shortest female population on record, averaging 149.4 cm.

Timor-Leste

The shortest men average around 160 cm, alongside Yemen and Laos.

South Korea

Its women posted the single largest national height gain of any population over a century.

MYTH VS FACT

Common Misconceptions

The myth

How tall you are comes mostly down to milk and nutrition.

The truth

Within a well-fed population, the largest share of the difference between adults is inherited; nutrition matters most for whole populations over generations, not for two well-fed individuals.

The myth

Napoleon was unusually short.

The truth

Contemporary records put him near 5 ft 6 to 7 in, average for a Frenchman of his era; the tiny-Napoleon image grew out of British caricature and a unit mix-up.

The myth

Your height stays the same all day.

The truth

Spinal discs compress under gravity as the day goes on, so adults can measure up to about 1% shorter by evening before the discs rehydrate overnight.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Short Person Day

GENETICS

Height is the textbook trait for measuring nature against nurture.

Height is the textbook case for how much of who we are is inherited, with most of the variation between well-fed adults tracing to their genes. That makes it the trait scientists return to whenever they test how genes and environment share the work.

HISTORY

Growth charts double as a public-health record

Average adult height tracks childhood nutrition, sanitation, and health so closely that historians read it as a measure of how well a society fed its children. A century of rising stature is, in part, a century of better childhoods.

CULTURE

Stature has long carried unearned meaning

People have read confidence, capability, and status into a few centimeters for as long as records exist, despite no scientific basis for it. A day framed around shorter stature pushes back on a bias that is measured but rarely examined.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Short Person Day

Measure yourself morning and night

Check your height when you wake up and again before bed to watch yourself shrink slightly through the day. Your spine compresses under gravity while you are upright and rebounds while you sleep.

READ

Read up on the genetics of height

Spend ten minutes with a primary source on how thousands of genes shape stature. It turns a casual day into a genuinely surprising science lesson.

CELEBRATE

Celebrate a short person who inspires you

Shout out a friend, relative, or public figure of shorter stature whose work you admire. The point of the day is affirmation, not pity.

BUST

Bust a height myth at the dinner table

Share the truth that Napoleon was average for his era, or that milk does not override your genes. A good myth correction travels further than a fact recited cold.

RETHINK

Rethink the design around you

Notice the shelf, seat, or counter built for someone taller and how it shapes a day. Small redesigns make spaces work for the whole height range, not just the average.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Short Person Day?

1 / 10

Roughly how much of the height difference between two adults in a well-fed population is genetic?

Answer

No. National Short Girl Appreciation Day is observed on December 21 and focuses on short women, while National Short Person Day lands the next day, December 22, as the gender-neutral version for people of any gender.