Grandparents’ Day was officially established in Italy as a national observance by Parliament through Law No. 159 of July 31, 2005. The day was created to formally give back, at least once a year, some of what many grandparents provide to their families 365 days a year: affection, support, financial help and everyday care.
The celebration is also intended to build a bridge between generations, strengthen the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, and help counter the loneliness that can accompany old age. The issue is particularly significant in an aging country such as Italy. According to the Italian Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics, around 3.8 million older people in Italy are not self-sufficient, a figure expected to rise. The organization estimates that between €7 billion and €8 billion a year would be needed to provide adequate care.
How it began
Italy’s Grandparents’ Day also has a religious inspiration. October 2, the date chosen for the celebration, coincides with the Feast of the Guardian Angels in the Catholic liturgical calendar.
The idea of dedicating a special day to grandparents, however, originated in the United States. In 1978, during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the country established a national Grandparents’ Day following a campaign led by Marian McQuade, a homemaker from West Virginia, a mother of 15 and a grandmother of around 40 grandchildren. The observance was introduced in the United Kingdom in 1990 and subsequently spread to many other countries, including Italy.
Italy’s 2005 law explicitly recognized the importance of grandparents, stating in Article 1 that the celebration was intended to acknowledge “the importance of the role played by grandparents within families and society as a whole.”
The Flower Connection
In Italy, the road toward a national Grandparents’ Day was also connected to an initiative involving the flower industry.
In June 1997, Arturo Croci and Franco Locatelli, then president of Unaflor, the National Union of Floricultural Producers’ Associations, and of the Lombardy Regional Association of Floricultural Producers, respectively, launched a project dedicated to grandparents.
The initiative involved schools across Italy in an educational program about flowers and plants, accompanied by a competition for drawings and poems dedicated to grandparents. The response was substantial: around 3,000 drawings and more than 2,000 poems were submitted.
Locatelli’s main goal was to create a specific day to celebrate grandparents and recognize their longstanding role as an emotional and family reference point for grandchildren and, more broadly, for younger generations.
The Legislative Process
The first official step toward national recognition came in 2004, when a proposal was submitted to establish Grandparents’ Day by law. That same year, Roberto Formigoni, then president of the Lombardy regional government, launched the celebration for October 2.
The Grandparents’ Day Committee subsequently contacted Formigoni and agreed on October 2 — the day dedicated to the Guardian Angels — as the date for the celebration. The goal was to give the observance a permanent place on the calendar and work with institutions to secure official recognition.
That recognition came on July 31, 2005, when Parliament passed Law No. 159, formally establishing Grandparents’ Day in Italy.
