HOLIDAYS

Known as Eid al-Adha, Eid ul Adha, Id-ul-Azha, Id-ul-Zuha, Hari Raya Haji or Bakr-id; the ‘Feast of Sacrifice is the most important feast of the Muslim calendar.

The festival may also be known as Al Eid Al Kabeer, which means the ‘Grand Eid’. It has this more important status as in religious terms as this Eid lasts for four days whereas Eid Al Fitr is one day, even though most countries observe about the same number of public holidays for both Eids.

This festival is celebrated throughout the Muslim world as a commemoration of Prophet Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice everything for God.

Eid al-Adha falls on the 10th day of Dhu al-Hijjah, the twelfth and final month in the Islamic calendar.

As the exact day is based on lunar sightings, the date may vary between countries.

Whit Monday, also known as Pentecost Monday is a public holiday in several countries on the Monday after Whitsunday. Also known as Pentecost or Whitsun, Whitsunday is observed fifty days (approx. seven weeks) after Easter and 10 days after Ascension.

It marks the end of the Easter cycle, which began 90 days ago with Ash Wednesday at the start of Lent.

Until fairly recently, Whit Monday was a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland. Until 1967, it was a bank holiday in the United Kingdom, when it was replaced by the ‘spring bank holiday’ on the last Monday in May.

It gets its English name for following “Whitsun”, the day that became one of the three baptismal seasons.

The name “Whitsunday” is now generally attributed to the white garments formerly worn by the candidates for baptism on this feast. 

The day commemorates the coming of the Holy Spirit in the form of flames to the Apostles, as recorded in the New Testament in Acts, 2.

The Holy Spirit allowed the apostles to speak in other languages, and they started preaching the word of Jesus to the Jews who come to Jerusalem for the feast of Shavuot (Pentecost). Saint Peter then delivered the first Christian sermon, which led to the conversion and baptism of 3,000 people. Many Christians recognize this event as the birth of the Church.

The Azores is a region of Portugal composed of nine islands. The archipelago discovered by Portuguese explorers in the 15th century, became an Autonomous Region of Portugal in 1976, following the Carnation Revolution of April 25th 1974.

The date moves each year to coincide with the first Monday following the Sunday of Pentecost, which is the beginning the Azorean traditional Holy Ghost festival cycle.

One of the highlights of the event is the bestowing of honours to distinguished Azorean personalities and institutions who have contributed to the wellbeing of the Azores and its people. 

The Day of the Autonomous Region of the Azores was established by the Legislative Assembly in 1980. The date, observed throughout the archipelago, as a public holiday.

According to the latest US census over 1.3 million individuals of Portuguese descent live in the United States, the majority with roots in the Azores.

Malta’s position in the Mediterranean sea has made the islands a strategically important location since classical times, with the islands passing from one ruler to another through the ages.

In 1800, the British had assisted Malta in removing the occupying French forces and the Maltese people had asked to become a sovereign nation in the British Empire. This was ratified in the treaty of Paris in 1815.

Following the end of World War I, tensions had been rising due to the inability of the colonial government to ensure basic supplies to the island. This had led to some merchants being seen to have made a lot of money from the situation, while others fared badly.

Added to this was the feeling that political moves for greater autonomy and independence for Malta were seemingly going unheard.

In early June 1919, a change in the governor of the island was treated with scepticism by some and on June 7th, a crowd started removing British flags from buildings that had been flying at half-mast across the island due to the recent death of the President of the Court.

The mob grew in size and turned their attention to the homes of the merchants who had been doing well from the recent supply issues. It was at one of these houses that a standoff between the mob and the army ended in tragedy with the soldiers firing and killing three protestors and injuring fifty others. The uprising continued for a few days during which time, a fourth civilian died from injuries received while resisting arrest.

The uprising was short-lasting, but the bloody events of June 7th 1919 led to the National Assembly drafting the new Constitution. Two years later, Malta was given responsibility for self-government and home affairs and the first Maltese Parliament was set up

The first colonists from Europe to have a presence in Kenya were German. In 1890, the region came under the control of the Imperial British East Africa Company, and Kenya was part of the British East Africa protectorate from 1895 until it became a British crown colony in 1920.

Disputes over land were common, leading to the Mau Mau rebellion by the Kikuyu people in 1952, which effectively put Kenya into a state of emergency for the next seven years.

The first direct elections took place in 1957, with the Kenya African National Union led by Jomo Kenyatta, an ethnic Kikuyu, forming the first government.

On June 1st 1963, Kenya became a self-governing country when Jomo Kenyatta became the first prime minister.

Full independence from British rule followed on December 12th 1963 when Kenya became an independent nation.

This is one of the three national holidays created by Article 8 of the Constitution of Kenya 2010.

Brunei had been a British protectorate since 1888, and as such, was reliant on the British armed forces for protection and defense. 

On 31 May 1961, to prepare for future independence, recruits from Brunei began military training, creating the first Brunei military force named the Brunei Malay Regiment. On 31 May 1965, the regiment was honoured with the royal title.

When Brunei gained independence from Britain on 1 January 1984, the Royal Brunei Malay Regiment was renamed as the Royal Brunei Armed Forces. 

There is no compulsory military service and only Brunei citizens with Malay ethnicity are allowed to enlist in the Royal Brunei Armed Forces. 

This is a day to recognise and pay tribute to the services of the land, air and navy forces. Around the country, the festival is celebrated with military parades, artillery shows, parachuting displays and exhibitions by various units of the armed forces.

Legend has it that the holiday honours the tragic death of Chu Yuan, who died in 288 BC. At the time of Warring States, Chu Yuan was a poet and the minister of the state. The King was captured during fighting and in honour and remembrance of the old King, Chu Yuan wrote a poem called “Li Soa.” This angered the new King, who ordered Chu Yuan into exile. Instead of leaving his beloved country, Chu Yuan threw himself into the Mi-Lo River. 

The legend proclaims that the people tried to rescue their honoured statesmen by chasing him down the river, beating drums to scare away the fish and throwing dumplings into the river so that the fish would not eat his body. Today’s celebrations symbolize the vain attempts of the friends and citizens who raced down the river to save Chu Yuan.

The Dragon Boat Festival is also known as poets day as Chu Yuan is widely regarded as China’s first poet. Chu spent his time in exile writing poems to express his anger and sadness.

Despite the legend, the festival’s origin is much, much older and is actually connected with very ancient beliefs in the power of the spirits that animated the world and the need to propitiate them. The wish to appease the Water Dragons, who were the spirits of the rivers, will have started on the banks of the great rivers with China’s first agriculturalists. Anthropologists think that the earliest boat races were a sort of ritual combat, connected with ceremonies conducted as spring passed to summer, to ensure ample rainfall, ward off pestilence, and reduce flood damage. 

You will find the Biblical accounts of the Ascension in Matthew 28:16-20, Mark 16:19-20, Luke 24:50-53 and Acts 1:6-11.

During the forty-day period before he ascended into heaven, it is believed that Jesus preached and intermingled with his apostles and disciples.

According to tradition, Ascension Day was first celebrated in 68 AD, however the first written evidence of the Ascension Day Feastoccurred in 385 AD.

Today, Ascension Day is celebrated primarily by Catholics and Anglican Christians. According to the Western Christianity methods of calculating the dates of Easter, the earliest possible date for Ascension Day is April 30, the latest possible date is June 3.

From the 15th century, Armenia had been part of the Ottoman Empire. By the 19th century, most of modern-day Armenia had come under the control of the Russian Empire.

With the Russian revolution ending the empire and the collapse of the Democratic Republic of Transcaucasia, the Armenian National Council Declared its sovereignty on May 28th 1918 and the First Armenian Republic was proclaimed, restoring Armenian statehood after six centuries of foreign control.

The republic proved to be short-lived. On December 2nd 1920, the Armenian government headed by Prime Minister Simon Vratsyan signed a treaty with the Bolsheviks and the Red Army entered Armenia and proclaimed it a Soviet Republic. The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic became a founding member of the Soviet Union in 1922.

Armenia regained its independence as the current Republic of Armenia on September 21st 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Armenia was the first non-Baltic republic to secede from the Soviet Union. This event is celebrated on Independence Day.

Saints Cyril and Methodius were two Byzantine brothers born in Thessalonica in the 9th century. Part of a prominent Christian family, their father was Greek and their mother was Bulgarian.

In 860 Cyril and Methodius went as missionaries to what is today Ukraine, spreading Christianity among the Slavic peoples of Bulgaria, Great Moravia, and Pannonia.

They are credited with devising the Glagolitic alphabet. At the request of the Moravian prince Rastislav, they began to transcribe religious books from Greek into Old Bulgarian. 

Their alphabet is seen as the precursor to Cyrillic, which was named after Cyril. Today most of the Slavic countries, including Russia, still use an extension of that alphabet.

Over 300 million people in 12 countries use the Cyrillic script.

Throughout his life, Cyril was known as Constantine, only adopting his religious name of Cyril while on his death bed. 

Both brothers are venerated in the Orthodox Church as saints with the title of “equal-to-apostles”.

In 1810, the weeklong revolutionary events ending on May 25th accelerated national sentiment that would eventually lead to the birth of the Argentine nation after four centuries of Spanish colonial rule. 

The May Revolution wasn’t a so much of a revolution but more the evolution of a sequence of political and social events in Buenos Aires during the early part of the nineteenth century which led to the first local government not designated by the Spanish Crown in the region known as the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, which at the time contained the present-day nations of Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Although the Revolution took place in Buenos Aires, one of the consequences was that the head of the Viceroyalty was ousted from office.

There was no great violence involved; the term “revolution” has been loosely applied by Argentine tradition to highlight the changing of their governmental system and distinguish the undisputed fact that after the May Revolution, Buenos Aires itself was no longer subservient to decisions taken by Spain in their name.

The history of this small country on the Horn of Africa is intertwined with its larger neighbour to the south, Ethiopia. 2,000 years ago, both countries were part of the Kingdom of Aksum. The region we identify as modern-day Eritrea emerged as Italian Eritrea in the last decades of the 19th century.

After Italy’s defeat in the second world war, the country fell under British control. Planned independence came in 1952 with self-governance and a 10-year period of support from Ethiopia. In 1962 Ethiopia annulled the Eritrean parliament and formally annexed Eritrea.

The invasion was resisted by the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (ELF) and a 30-year armed struggle came to an end on May 24th 1991, when ELF forces entered the capital Asmara. 

The current flag of Eritrea was adopted on May 24th 1993. the motif of an olive branch encircled by a wreath represents Eritrean autonomy. The colours are based on the flag of the (ELF).

In internationally observed elections in 1993 99.8% of Eritreans voted to become independent, which became official on May 24th 1993.

Eritrea is considered one of the most underdeveloped countries in the world. Eritreans make up a large part of the immigrants seeking asylum in Europe, with the United Nations estimating that about 5,000 Eritreans flee the country monthly.

Despite this, Independence Day remains an important holiday and events take place in the week leading up to May 24th, so it is referred to as “Independence Week” (qinyat natsnet). The festivities are marked by carnivals, street performances, sporting competitions, cycling races, musical concerts, parades, tent parties and plenty of flag-waving and displays of patriotism.

Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory located in the North Atlantic Ocean. The islands are named after the Spanish captain Juan de Bermúdez, who claimed the islands for Spain while travelling to the Americas in 1505. 

Bermuda Day is seen as an important date in the Bermudan calendar not only as an opportunity to celebrate the islands but also the position of the holiday at the end of May is used to signify the arrival of summer when it is warm enough to consider swimming in the ocean after winter and for the famous Bermuda shorts to be worn as business attire instead of trousers. 

This style of shorts was used by the British Army in tropical regions. After the Second World War, there was a shortage of cloth in Bermuda, so to ensure their staff could be dressed properly, the owners of two banks arranged for a local tailor to make pairs of shorts, modeled on those used by the British military.

This public holiday began in 1902 as Empire Day, a day that was decreed across the British Empire to commemorate the death of Queen Victoria on May 24th, her birth date. Canada still observes this as Victoria Day and Belize observes it as Sovereign Day. 

Due to the number of countries who gained independence from Britain, the holiday was renamed Commonwealth Day in 1958. 

The holiday was first named as Bermuda Day in 1979. and until 2018, it was celebrated on May 24th or the following Monday if May 24th fell on a weekend. The change means that Bermuda Day will always create a long weekend, called Bermuda Day Weekend, which will be an opportunity to showcase Bermuda’s culture and heritage to locals and visitors. Bermuda Day always takes place in Heritage Month.

To mark the day, a Bermuda Day Parade has been held in Hamilton every year since 1979. There are also sporting events such as the Bermuda Day Half Marathon and a cricket match between the two parts of the island.

A MAN who believes the spring weather gives him licence to wear a Hawaiian shirt has been sternly corrected. 

Flamboyant dresser David, not his real name, has been reprimanded by friends and passers-by for greeting relatively pleasant temperatures with a floral shirt more suited to the tropical climate of a Central Pacific archipelago.

Friend Shaun, not his real name, said: “I’ve not shut Dave down because of his cultural insensitivity. He just looks like a massive dickhead.

“We’re only two days into April. The mercury is slowly inching up to 16 degrees. This is a time for T-shirts under denim jackets, maybe shorts if you’re one of those men and feeling adventurous.

“They’re only acceptable on holiday, during a prolonged spell of sweltering weather or at an office Hawaiian day if you work in a twat’s office. Even then, shirts decorated with little pineapples? Leave them to their target demographic of the closeted and divorced.”

Eyewitness Emma, not her real name, said: “Tom’s posing a visual hazard. I had to step into oncoming traffic in order to go over and tell him to put a hoodie over that gaudy shit.

“Also, wearing a Hawaiian today is goading the British weather into turning grey, showery and f**king freezing for the next six weeks. Don’t taunt it, you know how it gets.”

In the 16th century, Montenegro emerged as a semi-autonomous region within the Ottoman Empire. A series of rebellions against Turkish control resulted in Montenegro gaining its independence in 1878 under the Treaty of Berlin.

The name ‘Montenegro’ which refers to the black mountains that cover large parts of the region (about 60% of the country is more than 1000 metres about sea level) was first used in the 15th century.

In 1918, at the end of the First World War, Montenegro became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and then a republic within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia after the end of the Second World War.

Following the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992, Montenegro and Serbia established the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which was renamed as Serbia and Montenegro in 2003 under the Belgrade Agreement, which also contained a provision that any referendum on the independence of Montenegro would not take place for three years.

The independence referendum was held on May 21st 2006, with an 85% turnout, the percentage of votes in favour of independence was 55.5% – a result that was only just over the 55% threshold for accepting independence. The Montenegro Parliament declared independence on June 3rd 2006 and became the 192nd member of the United Nations on June 24th 2006.

Montenegro’s flag was adopted on July 13th 2004. The design is based on the flag that was in use during the reign of King Nicola I, who was king between 1910 and 1918.

After Montenegro became independent of Yugoslavia, its internet domain name changed from .yu to .me

The Haitian flag was adopted on May 18th 1803, on the last day of the Congress of Arcahaie. The congress was a meeting that had two key outcomes;  the establishment of a united command of the revolutionary army under the supreme authority of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and the adoption of a flag by the indigenous army.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines created the flag by taking a French tricolour and ripping out the white centre. His god-daughter, Catherine Flon, sewed the remaining horizontal bands together – the tricolour became the bi-colour. The blue in the Haitian flag is said to represent the Haitian’s of African descent and red for the Gens de couleur (French for ‘people of colour’). 

In the struggle for independence from France, Haitians of African descent had been set against the ‘Gens de couleur’. They had made peace earlier in 1803 and were now united against the French. It is interesting that the Haitian struggle for independence was inspired by the French Revolution and now their flag was also based on the French one.

Over the intervening years, the flag has been changed several times. The bands became vertical in 1804. A red and black variation has also bee in in use more than once. The current flag was adopted on February 17th 1986, after the departure of Jean-Claude Duvalier and was ratified a year later by the official adoption of the March 29th 1987 Constitution.

The creation of the original flag was a seminal moment in Haiti’s nationhood and was soon being celebrated each year on May 18th.

In 1919, the government added Universities Day as part of the celebrations. Highlighting the educational system was seen as important by the government as they saw the educational system was under threat due to the U.S. occupation of Haiti that started in 1915.

Today is dedicated to the Day of Family Purity and Respect for Parents, following an order issued by the Georgian government.

The holiday applies primarily to employees of administrative bodies as defined by the General Administrative Code of Georgia.

According to the order, the administrative bodies are allowed to identify specific services and employees to whom the holiday will not apply. This exemption is intended for roles essential to state power and the normal functioning of society, ensuring these critical functions remain uninterrupted.

The decision explicitly excludes certain financial and procurement activities. It does not apply to financial obligations related to individuals under the supervision of the National Bank of Georgia and the activities related to state procurement, as outlined in the Law of Georgia on State Procurement.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) was founded as a rebel movement on May 16th 1983. It was led by Commander-in-Chief John Garang de Mabior. Along with the political wing, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the aim of the SPLA was to establish an autonomous Southern Sudan, initially within a united Sudan.

Its military actions against the Sudanese government became the Second Sudanese Civil War that would last until 2005.

After South Sudan gained its independence in 2011, the SPLA became the army of the new country. 

The SPLA was renamed as the South Sudan People’s Defense Force in 2018, partly as the SPLA has splintered into so many acronyms over the years that is hard to keep track of who is fighting who.

Paraguay is a landlocked country in South America, bordered by Brazil to the east, Argentina to the south and west, and Bolivia to the northwest. Before the arrival of Europeans, the territory was inhabited by various indigenous peoples, including the Guarani, who still make up a significant portion of the population today.

Paraguay was first colonised by the Spanish in the 16th century. The settlement of Asunción, now the capital of Paraguay, was founded by the Spanish on Ascension Day (August 15th) 1537.

There are two theories about where the name “Paraguay” comes from. One version says it means either “River of the Payaguas”, an Indian tribe, or “crowned river” after the native Indian Guaraní words for palm crown and water. A more colourful versions is that there was a parrot named Frank that the first Jesuit settlers befriended when they arrived in the region. To back up this theory, on old maps, Paraguay was labelled as “Parrot”. 

The region had shown dissent against the Spanish for several years and tension had risen in the early years of the nineteenth century due to the growing influence of Argentina in the area.

Some bad decisions by the Governor had weakened Spanish presence, which was already affected by the Napoleonic Wars, enabling the Paraguayans, led by a lawyer, Dr José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia., to overthrow the Spanish in a fairly bloodless revolution on May 14th 1811.

As a result, Paraguay became the second independent nation in the new world – the United States was the first. Dr Francia became the first President of Paraguay, ruling from 1814 to 1840.

He was influential in the design of the flag of Paraguay, which uniquely is the only national flag in the world that has a different image on each side. In the center of one side is the Paraguayan coat of arms, and on the opposite, the treasury seal with the national motto: “Paz y justicia” (“Peace and Justice”).

In announcing this new holiday, Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said: “They were starting a new life in an unknown land and stayed to become an integral part of our country. I reconfirm my promise to inaugurate a new national holiday in 2023.”

The word girmit represented an Indian pronunciation of the English language word “agreement” – from the indenture “agreement” of the British Government with Indian labourers. The agreements specified the workers’ length of stay in foreign parts and the conditions attached to their return to the British Raj.

The colonial authorities promoted the sugar cane industry, recognising the need to establish a stable economic base for the colony, but were unwilling to exploit indigenous labour and threaten the Fijian way of life. The use of imported labour from the Solomon Islands and what is now Vanuatu generated protests in the United Kingdom, and the Governor Sir Arthur Hamilton-Gordon decided to implement the indentured labour scheme, which had existed in the British Empire since 1837.

The Leonidas, a labour transport vessel, disembarked at Levuka from Calcutta on May 14th 1879. The 498 indentured workers who disembarked were the first of over 61,000 to arrive from South and East Asia in the following 37 years. The majority were from the districts of eastern and southern provinces, followed by labourers from northern and western regions, then later south eastern countries, they originated from different regions, villages, backgrounds and castes that later mingled or intermarried hence the “Fijian Indian” identity was created. The indentured workers originated mostly from rural village backgrounds. 

After five years of work in the cane fields, the British freed the girmits from bonded labour but did not offer them a passage back. So, most of them stayed back and by the mid-1980s their descendants through hard work and education have made a mark in Fiji dominating business and professional fields.

By this time Indo-Fijians made up 49% of the population but indigenous Fijians controlled land ownership.  In April 1987, for the first time since independence in 1970, Fiji elected a multi-ethnic Fiji Labour Party to power supported mainly by Indo-Fijian voters but led by indigenous Fijian academic Dr Timoci Bavadra. Most of the Cabinet however were Indo-Fijians.