Book of Daze: Unreturned Tupperware Day

Few holidays evoke the lingering sadness of Unreturned Tupperware Day, observed each year by people who have surrendered their best containers to neighbors, relatives, and dinner guests who made off with a casserole and never returned its container.

Unreturned Tupperware Day is marked by small, private ceremonies: a votive candle lit on a mismatched lid, a moment of silence for the red rubber seals last seen in 2019, and the recitation of names — Pyrex, Rubbermaid, the off-brand from the grocery store endcap — spoken with the reverence usually reserved for the war dead.

The observance of Unreturned Tupperware Day has grown steadily since the founding of the Council for Container Repatriation in 2022, whose motto, They Were Promised Back, appears on banners at public gatherings.

Donna Frawley, 61, middle-school cafeteria supervisor, who has loaned out forty-one containers in her lifetime, lit a candle on her windowsill at dusk.

“I sent a lasagna to a sick neighbor in my best rectangular container months ago,” Frawley said. “I have since seen that container, through a window, holding what appeared to be old screws. I will not say anything. This is not the day for confrontation. This is the day for grief.”

Marcus Pelletier, 47, regional septic inspector, who maintains a written ledger of outgoing dishes that he describes as “not a list of debts, just a record,” observed the day in silence.

“People think you forget,” Pelletier said. “You don’t forget. You simply choose a posture of dignity. The blue one with the snap corners is at the Hendersons’. It has been there since the block party. We do not discuss the block party.”

Gail Underwood, 58, notary public and self-described “bottom person,” who owns nine lids and fourteen matching bases, spent the morning attempting to reunite them.

“The bottoms always come home,” Underwood said, lighting a candle inside one of them. “It’s the lids that go missing. Nobody talks about the lids. There is a whole population of orphaned bottoms now, waiting for a lid that is never coming home. I light a candle for each of them. I have lots of candles.”

At sundown, observers are encouraged to gather their surviving containers and lids, take a full inventory, and accept what cannot be recovered. The Council asks only that participants resist the urge to text a neighbor. The container is gone. The grief is yours to keep.

Browse the full Book of Daze entries here

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