Sujet : Mid-May, a quiet time
De : benlizro (at) *nospam* ihug.co.nz (Ross Clark)
Groupes : sci.langDate : 23. May 2025, 23:08:59
Autres entêtes
Organisation : A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID : <100qrlu$9p2j$1@dont-email.me>
User-Agent : Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.9.1
Well, there was
Buddha's Birthday (5 May) in Hong Kong. and then
Visakha Bucha (11 May + "VB Holiday" on the 12th) in Thailand
and Vesak (12 May) in Singapore. Both given as (Buddha Day).
"The name Vesak is derived from the Pali term vesākha or Sanskrit vaiśākha for the lunar month of Vaisakha, which is considered the month of Buddha's birth."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VesakBucha may be what little Thai dictionary has as buu-chaa 'worship (sacred objects)'.
But the 11th was also Mothers' Day! (There's a question about the apostrophe already.) I had a nice lunch at Japanese restaurant called Sora ('sky'), with two mothers and four of their children.
In my original list, Mothers' Day (11 May) is listed only for Puerto Rico! That's probably because it's not a public holiday in most places.
And maybe also because it's got different dates. There's a handy table here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother%27s_Day(note %27 apostrophe)
"In 1912, Anna Jarvis trademarked the phrase "Second Sunday in May, Mother's Day, Anna Jarvis, Founder", and created the Mother's Day International Association. She specifically noted that "Mother's" should "be a singular possessive, for each family to honor its own mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers in the world." This is also the spelling used by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in his 1914 presidential proclamation, by the U.S. Congress in relevant bills, and by various U.S. presidents in their proclamations concerning Mother's Day."
Nah. Don't like that attitude. I prefer apostrophe last, or none.
The 5th (of May) was actually quite a busy day, with 8 different countries celebrating this and that. I'll mention only:
Day of the Restoration of Latvian Independence
(that's the post-Soviet one, 1990, if you're keeping track of these Baltic countries)
Bank Holiday (Ireland)
Early May Bank Holiday (UK)
I've always wondered about these generic-sounding "bank holidays".
What are they celebrating? Banks being closed?
Are there any distinctive customs or traditions?
And finally, in Canada, 19 May was Victoria Day.
Yes, it's about the Queen of that name. (In French it's called Fête de la Reine.) Used to be 24 May (QV's actual birthday); now Mondayized, and serves as official birthday of whoever's on the throne. Victoria was on it at the time of Confederation (1867), which is Canada's origin story.
Hence, says Wiki, she is known as the "Mother of Confederation", though I can't remember ever hearing that expression.