Documents for "Days, Months, Holidays, and Festivals":

• April see month.

• April Fool's Day or All Fool's Day, holiday of uncertain origin, known for practical joking and celebrated on the first of April. Prior to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1564, the date was observed as New Year's Day by...

• August see month.

• bank holidays days when the law requires that banks be closed. In the United States the list varies from state to state but generally includes, besides the major holidays, many days that are observed only by the...

• Brumaire second month of the French Revolutionary calendar. The coup of 18 (actually 18-19) Brumaire (Nov. 9-10, 1799), engineered chiefly by Sieyès, overthrew the Directory and established the Consulate...

• calendar [Lat., from Kalends], system of reckoning time for the practical purpose of recording past events and calculating dates for future plans. The calendar is based on noting ordinary and easily...

• Canada Day formerly Dominion Day, Canadian national holiday, celebrated July 1. It is the anniversary of the uniting in 1867 of Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia as the dominion of Canada....

• carnival communal celebration, especially the religious celebration in Catholic countries that takes place just before Lent. Since early times carnivals have been accompanied by parades, masquerades, pageants, and other forms of revelry that had their origins in pre-Christian pagan rites, particularly fertility rites...

• Columbus Day holiday commemorating Christopher Columbus's discovery of America. It has been traditionally celebrated on Oct. 12 throughout most of the United States, parts of Canada, and in several of the Latin...

• December see month.

• Decoration Day see Memorial Day.

• Dominion Day see Canada Day.

• Earth Day Apr. 22, a day to celebrate the environment. The first Earth Day was organized in 1970 to promote the ideas of ecology, encourage respect for life on earth, and highlight growing concern over...

• era period of historic time. In geology, it is the name applied to large divisions of geological process, e.g., Paleozoic era (see geology ). In chronology an era is a period reckoned from a fixed point in time, as before or after the birth of Christ—before Christ, BC; Anno Domini [year of the Lord], AD The points best known for Western history are the creation of the world (Jewish, equivalent to 3761 BC; Byzantine, 5508 BC); the founding of the city of Rome [753 BC; year...

• Feast of Fools see Fools, Feast of.

• February see month.

• Flag Day anniversary of the adoption of the American flag in 1777. It is celebrated on June 14 but is not a legal holiday.

• Fourth of July   Independence Day, or July Fourth, U.S. holiday, commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Celebration of it began during the American Revolution. It has been the most important patriotic holiday ever since. Traditionally it has been celebrated with the firing of guns and fireworks,...

• French Revolutionary calendar the official calendar of France, Nov. 24, 1793-Dec. 31, 1805. Its introduction was decreed by the Convention on Oct. 5, 1793, but it was computed from Sept. 22, 1792, the autumnal equinox and the day after the...

• Friday see Sabbath ; week.

• Fructidor 12th month of the French Revolutionary calendar. The coup of 18 Fructidor (Sept. 4, 1797), in which General Augereau was a key figure, annulled the previous elections and removed Lazare Carnot and...

• Halloween Oct. 31, the eve of All Saints' Day , observed with traditional games and customs. The word comes from medieval England's All Hallows' eve (Old Eng. hallow = "saint" ). However, many of these customs predate Christianity, going back to Celtic practices associated with Nov. 1, which was Samhain , the beginning of winter and the Celtic new year. Witches and other evil spirits were believed to roam the earth on this evening, playing tricks on human beings to mark the season of diminishing...

• holiday [altered from holy day], day set aside for the commemoration of an important event. Holidays are often accompanied by public ceremonies, such as parades and carnivals, and by religious observances;...

• Ides see calendar.

• Independence Day see Fourth of July.

• January see month.

• July see month.

• June see month.

• Kalends see calendar.

• Kwanzaa or Kwanza , secular seven-day festival in celebration of the African heritage of African Americans, beginning on Dec. 26. Developed by Maulana Karenga and first observed in 1966, Kwanzaa is based in part on...

• Labor Day holiday celebrated in the United States and Canada on the first Monday in September to honor the laborer. It was inaugurated by the Knights of Labor in 1882 and made a national holiday by the U.S...

• leap year see calendar.

• March see month.

• Mardi Gras last day before the fasting season of Lent. It is the French name for Shrove Tuesday. Literally translated, the term means "fat Tuesday" and was so called because it represented the last opportunity for merrymaking and excessive indulgence in food and drink before the solemn season of fasting. In the cities of some Roman Catholic...

• May see month.

• May Day first day of May. Its celebration probably originated in the spring fertility festivals of India and Egypt. The festival of the Roman goddess of spring, Flora, was celebrated from Apr. 28 to May 3...

• Memorial Day holiday in the United States observed in late May. Previously designated Decoration Day, it was inaugurated in 1868 by Gen. John A. Logan for the purpose of decorating the graves of Civil War...

• midsummer day and midsummer night names given to the feast of the nativity of St. John the Baptist (June 24) and the preceding night (St. John's Eve, June 23). Because midsummer is about the time of the solstice, it has been...

• Monday see week.

• month in chronology, the conventional period of a lunation, i.e., passage of the moon through all its phases. It is usually computed at approximately 29 or 30 days. For the computation of the month and...

• New Style dates see calendar.

• New Year's Day among ancient peoples the first day of the year frequently corresponded to the vernal or autumnal equinox, or to the summer or winter solstice. In the Middle Ages it was celebrated among Christians...

• Nones see calendar.

• November see month.

• October see month.

• Old Style dates see calendar.

• Saint Valentine's Day Western European Christian holiday, originally the Roman feast of Lupercalia. It was christianized in memory of the martyrdom of St. Valentine in AD 270, who, in medieval times, came to be associated with the union of lovers under conditions of duress. The holiday is...

• sans-culottides the last five days of the year in the French Revolutionary calendar , thus named in honor of the sans-culottes.

• Saturday see week ; Sabbath.

• September see month.

• Sunday see Sabbath ; week.

• Thanksgiving Day national holiday in the United States commemorating the Pilgrims ' celebration of the harvest reaped by the Plymouth Colony in 1621, after a winter of great starvation and privation. The celebration was probably held in October. The neighboring Wampanoags, who...

• Thursday see week.

• Tuesday see week.

• Valentine's Day see Saint Valentine's Day.

• Veterans' Day holiday formerly observed in the United States as Armistice Day in commemoration of the signing of the Armistice ending World War I. Nov. 11 officially became Veterans' Day on May 24, 1954, by act...

• Wednesday see week.

• week period of time shorter than the month, commonly seven days. The ancient Egyptians used a 10-day period, as did the French under the short-lived French Revolutionary calendar. In many regions a four-day to eight-day market week is based on the recurrence of market days; the early Romans observed an eight-day market week. This period also corresponds roughly with the...