Dec 18 2008
Public Holidays - USA
Continuing my Public Holidays series… first we talked about Public Holidays - General, then we turned the spotlight on Public Holidays - Switzerland. Now for the United States of America!
Like Switzerland, the USA does not have national holidays per se. It is up to the state or local government to determine holidays that pertain to its residents. What then passes as “public holidays” are actually days off granted by the U.S. Federal government to its employees. There are a total of eleven such days, ten of which occur annually, and an unusual one every four years that impacts a small portion of the federal employees.
Here’s an overview of these eleven days:
| Date | Event |
Remarks |
| 1 January | New Year’s Day | The day to recover from ringing in the new year the night before… |
| Third Monday in January | Martin Luther King, Jr. Day | Honors the civil rights leader who was assassinated in 1968. |
| January 20, every four years, following the Presidential election | Inauguration Day | Only for Washington D.C., and border counties of Maryland and Virginia, to ease congestion surrounding the swearing-in of the new President and Vice-President. |
| Third Monday in February | Washington’s Birthday | Honors George Washington. Nowadays, many people erroneously call it Presidents’ Day, thinking it also honors Lincoln (observed on 12 February) and/or all Presidents. |
| Last Monday in May | Memorial Day | Officially honors the war dead from the Civil War onwards, although most people just know it as the unofficial beginning of the summer season. |
| 4 July | Independence Day | Commemorates the 1776 Declaration of Independence of the American Colonies from Great Britain and the British Empire. |
| First Monday in September | Labor Day | The rest of the world marks this on 1 May! Also marks the unofficial end of the summer season. |
| Second Monday in October | Columbus Day | Honors Christopher Columbus, even though he didn’t actually discover the Americas! |
| 11 November | Veterans Day | Honors veterans of the U.S armed forces. |
| Fourth Thursday in November | Thanksgiving | Marks the start of the year-end holiday season, this is the main family get-together event of the year where everyone expresses thanks for their material and spiritual possessions. |
| 25 December | Christmas | Celebrates the official birth of Jesus. |
What first struck me about the holidays in the USA was how most of them were not determined by a specific date, but rather, by the day’s predetermined position within a specific month. Confused? Then look at how Labor Day, Memorial Day, Columbus Day and Thanksgiving are determined. Turns out this is a relatively recent occurrence, thanks to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act passed in 1968, which was designed to guarantee a certain number of long 3-day weekends for federal employees. I like it!
If you remember, pretty much all of Switzerland’s holidays were of a religious nature. Not so with the USA. Perhaps it’s due to the conscious separation of church and state? Or due to pride in history? If you take a look at the table above, you’ll see that many of the holidays mark people or events from U.S. history.
This doesn’t mean that there are no religious observances in the USA. To the contrary, by virtue of its melting pot history, there are diverse cultural, ethnic and religious events throughout the year, celebrated by pockets of relevant people everywhere. States and businesses rarely grant days off for them, though, and instead, many leverage them for commercial gain.
Here are some of them:
| Date | Event |
Remarks |
| 2 February | Groundhog Day | Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog, predicts whether the country will have six more weeks of winter |
| First Sunday of February | Super Bowl Sunday | Two teams from the National Football League battle it out for the championship title. Well-known for commercials produced just for this event. |
| 17 March | St Patrick’s Day | Celebration of Irish heritage and culture. Chicago dyes its river green for this day. |
| Friday before Easter | Good Friday | Commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus. |
| Easter Sunday | Easter | Celebrates the belief of Jesus’ resurrection. On the next day, the annual Easter egg roll is held on the White House lawn. |
| 5 May | Cinco de Mayo | Celebration of Mexican heritage culture and heritage. |
| 14 June | Flag Day | Honors the American flag. |
| September/October | Rosh Hashanah | The Jewish New Year. |
| September/October | Yom Kippur | Highest of the Jewish High Holidays, ten days after Rosh Hashanah. |
| 31 October | Halloween | The night to dress in costumes and go trick-or-treating. |
| 7 December | Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day | Mourns the Japanese attack in 1941. |
| December | Hanukkah | Eight day Jewish Festival of Lights. |
| 26 December - 1 January | Kwanzaa | A week-long festival honoring African heritage and culture, created in 1966. |
That’s a lot of holidays, holy-days and festivals! But wait, there’s more! I haven’t touched upon the individual states and their own specific observances! For example, in addition to the ten federal holidays that may or may not be observed, Illinois does observe the following:
| Date | Event |
Remark |
| 12 February | Lincoln’s Birthday | Illinois being the “Land of Lincoln” and all, state offices close on this day. There is no impact on commercial business, however. |
| first Monday of March | Pulaski Day | Honors Casimir Pulaski, a Pole who helped train US soldiers during the Revolutionary War. Chicago, which boasts the largest Polish population outside of Warsaw, marks the event with a parade. |
I will stop here. Information overload is happening again! Stay tuned for the next installment, where we get to look at the Public Holidays of Malaysia.
Cheers,
*lynne*
Another big thank you to wikipedia for its excellent article on Public Holidays in the United States.
even though Malaysia does have a nice amount of public holidays, it still loses out with Japan. Can you believe that Japan has a lot more holidays than Malaysia.
p.s. I wish I work in Selangor instead of KL. Then, I can get more holidays. LOL
Hi Lina! I went to wiki and counted - looks like there are 15 holidays in Japan, which is about the same as Malaysia,,, but I think the difference is “if there is a day sandwiched between two public holidays, then that middle day is also a day off”: I guess that helps add more days off?
We don’t have enough holidays here in England! Apart from the religious ones at Easter and Christmas we only have one other holiday in August.
louiejerome: only three????!! that’s a crime!! :p
Joanna: oooh, the Farmer’s Almanac! That’s a good reference guide, thank you! Their “red letter days” feature is just what I need!