Martin's Almanack

This weekend was a long weekend in Canada, because Monday was the Victoria Day , a federal public holiday, which falls on the Monday preceding May 25, or the penultimate Monday in May, if you want to talk fancy. It marks the unofficial beginning of the summer season. Yay! Originally set up to honour Queen Victoria 's birthday, Victoria Day has been since celebrated as the official birthday of Canada's sovereign (no matter what their actual birthday is). To avoid mentioning the English monarch, Quebec created the National Patriot's Day instead, to be celebrated at exactly the same. It is to commemorate the Rebellions of 1837-1838 , which happened in both Upper and Lower Canada . They are not wrong: the rebellions actually contributed more to the formation of Canada than Queen Victoria ever did, even though I doubt that this was the motivation for the separatist Parti Quebecois when they introduced the holiday in ...

May 8 is the VE Day , when we commemorate the victory over Nazi Germany in Europe in 1945. But since in 2022 it is the 2nd Sunday in May , it is also the Mother's Day (in Canada, US, and many other countries). To all mothers, Happy Mother's Day! Different cultures have different traditions of celebrating mothers, but this specific type of Mother's Day is an American tradition, which was established in 1907 and passed into the US law by 1914. That celebration quickly spread to some other countries, while yet others retained their original way of marking such a day or found new ones. However, many/most countries celebrate Mother's Day around this time of the year. Note: UK and Ireland use for this occasion the date of the old tradition of Mothering Sunday , 4th week of Lent , when people visited their Mother Church (the nearest cathedral). Note: Czechs were switching the date according to politics of the day. In 1920's, they used the Am...