This series of weekly posts summarizes the worldwide public holidays news highlights of the past week, and presents our analysis of general trends, identifying important announcements that we feel can be expected in the upcoming weeks.Three of the weekdays of the past week were marked by major public holidays in multiple countries.
- Monday, May 21, 2007, was interesting because, although a public holiday in 11 countries, spread over 3 continents, the actual public holiday being celebrated was never the same in more than 2 countries. In fact the 2 holidays that were each observed in 2 different countries, are quite interesting by themselves. On this recent Monday, Venezuela and Colombia both celebrated Ascension Day, which everywhere else in the world is celebrated on a Thursday. In addition 2 countries, Canada and Belize, celebrated the Queen's Birthday, a holiday that exists in many countries, but almost always follows a different recurrence rule.
- Thursday, May 24, 2007, was also a mix of different public holidays, occurring on the same date, though 2 of these were one-off public holidays, and both were slightly odd. In Namibia, civil servants got the afternoon off to "prepare" for the next day's Africa Day public holiday. And in Syria, a public holiday was declared so that civil servants, students and members of the security services could attend spontaneous rallies organized to endure that this Sunday's presidential referendum topped the previous score of above 99%.
- Friday, May 25, 2007, was mainly celebrated in Africa, as the Africa Day public holiday.
In addition to the holidays that happened this past week, there were protracted discussions in both France and Switzerland about upcoming public holidays.
- In Switzerland, most of the week was spent discussing whether or not the August 1st, National Day public holiday would be celebrated on the legendary Grütli meadows (our news item of May 24). In the end it seems that the event will not be held in 2007, although last minute changes are possible.
- In France, discussions all revolved around what, if anything, would happen to the Whit Monday public holiday, cancelled as of 2005, following the elderly death toll during the 2003 summer heat wave. This was much ado about nothing, as the position of the government had been clear for months, but in a country where one is always pestered with call to show solidarity, it seems that most were eager to avoid losing a single day off to help the elderly. Nice lesson in solidarity.
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