I was thinking about how we've adopted both Cinco de Mayo* and St Patrick's Day as national days here in the U.S. We celebrate Mexican and Irish culture on those days (to some small extent anyway). This made me think that we really could use some more days to help fill up the calendar and cover the other ten months.
*According to Wikipedia, Cinco de Mayo isn't really that big a deal in Mexico itself. How strange is that?
So let's see what we can find out . . .
- January - Chinese New Year. The only problem with this is that, like Easter, it moves around a little bit and sometimes bleeds into February.
- February 11th- Japan's 'National Foundation Day' which celebrates the founding of the Imperial line by Japan's first emperor.
- March 17th- St Patrick's Day (natch)
- April 30th- Queen's Day from the Netherlands. One of it's traditions is for flea markets in the streets. This should also serve as the kick off to garage sale season.
- May 5th- Cinco de Mayo.
- June 21st- Solstice, which is celebrated in Greenland. (Not a lot of obvious candidates for June . . .)
- July 4th- Independence Day, this is the U.S. after all.
- August 15th- Indian Independence Day, which celebrates the day they officially got clear of the UK. You could do a whole calendar with that exact phrase.
- September 7th- Brazilian Independence Day, which would undoubtedly be celebrated with parades and dancing.
- October 3rd- German Unity Day (or we could simply go with Oktoberfest).
- November 30th- St Andrew's Day, patron saint of Scotland. Late in the year for kilts, but it is always the right time for Scotch!
- December ??- I couldn't find any good obvious holiday but really if any month has enough holidays, it's probably December.
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