Der große Sagtag: Kinder dürfen alles entscheiden

What is a German “Sagtag,” and where does the word come from?

Sagtag is a homemade word this family invented for what English calls a “Yes Day”: one day where parents have to say yes to (almost) everything the kids ask. It’s built from sagen (“to say”) plus Tag (“day”), deliberately echoing the shape of the English original — the family in this clip even points out the wordplay themselves: “wir sagen ja Sagtag.”

The tradition traces to Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s 2009 picture book Yes Day, later a Jennifer Garner Netflix movie of the same name (2021); German coverage of the trend usually calls it Ja-Tag, a more literal translation. Sagtag is this particular family’s own coinage — a nice example of German staying flexible enough to build a fresh pun rather than default to an English loan or the already-circulating Ja-Tag.