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Public Holidays in Fiji reflect the country's cultural diversity. Each major religion in Fiji has a public holiday dedicated to it. Also Fiji's major cities and towns hold annual carnivals, commonly called festivals, which are usually named for something relevant to the city or town, such as the Sugar Festival in Lautoka, as Lautoka's largest and most historically important industry is sugar production.
Public Holidays that fall on the weekend are usually moved to either the Friday of the preceding week or the Monday of the following week. This includes religious holidays as well, though in essence they are celebrated on the actual day.
Date | Festival | Notes |
---|---|---|
January 1 | New Year's Day | |
March/April | Good Friday | Major Christian |
March/April | Holy Saturday | Major Christian |
March/April | Easter Monday | Major Christian |
May 14 | Girmit Day | Public Holiday celebrating the Girmit of Fiji. |
Last Monday in May | Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna Day | The celebrations in honor of Fiji's first modern statesman actually begin a week early. It is almost always celebrated on a Monday. This was formerly a public holiday, but the military-backed interim government abolished it following the military coup of 2006. |
October 10 | Fiji Day | The anniversary of both Fiji's cession to the United Kingdom in 1874 and attainment of independence in 1970. The week leading up to Fiji Day, Fiji Week, features seven days of religious and cultural ceremonies celebrating the country's diversity. |
October/November | Diwali | Hindu |
January/December | The Prophet's Birthday | Muslim |
December 25 | Christmas Day | |
December 26 | Boxing Day | The day after Christmas. |
Easter, also called Pascha or Resurrection Sunday, is a Christian festival and cultural holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in the New Testament as having occurred on the third day of his burial following his crucifixion by the Romans at Calvary c. 30 AD. It is the culmination of the Passion of Jesus Christ, preceded by Lent, a 40-day period of fasting, prayer, and penance.
The liturgical year, also called the church year, Christian year or kalendar, consists of the cycle of liturgical seasons in Christian churches that determines when feast days, including celebrations of saints, are to be observed, and which portions of Scripture are to be read either in an annual cycle or in a cycle of several years.
Holy Week is the most sacred week in the liturgical year in Christianity. For all Christian traditions it is a moveable observance. In Eastern Christianity, which also calls it Great Week, it is the week following Great Lent and Lazarus Saturday, starting on the evening of Palm Sunday and concluding on the evening of Great Saturday. In Western Christianity, Holy Week is the sixth and last week of Lent, beginning with Palm Sunday and concluding on Holy Saturday.
Spring, also known as springtime, is one of the four temperate seasons, succeeding winter and preceding summer. There are various technical definitions of spring, but local usage of the term varies according to local climate, cultures and customs. When it is spring in the Northern Hemisphere, it is autumn in the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa. At the spring equinox, days and nights are approximately twelve hours long, with daytime length increasing and nighttime length decreasing as the season progresses until the Summer Solstice in June and December.
In the United States, public holidays are set by federal, state, and local governments and are often observed by closing government offices or giving government employees paid time off. The federal government does not require any private business to close or offer paid time off, as is the case for most state local governments, so employers determine which holidays to observe.
Public Holidays in India, also known as Statutory Holidays, or colloquially Government Holidays, consist of a variety of cultural, nationalistic, and religious holidays that are legislated in India at the union or state levels. While many of these holidays are honored and acknowledged nationwide, state legislation varies regarding which are officially recognized.
Bangladesh has numerous public holidays, including national memorial, religious and secular holidays of Bengali origin. The Bengali traditional calendar, known as Banggabda is the national and official calendar in Bangladesh. The holidays are celebrated according to Bengali, Islamic or Gregorian calendars for religious and civil purposes, respectively. Religious festivals like Eid are celebrated according to the Islamic calendar whereas other national holidays are celebrated according to the Bengali and Gregorian calendar. While the Islamic calendar is based on the movement of the moon, it loses synchronization with the seasons, through seasonal drift. Therefore, some public holidays are subject to change every year based on the lunar calendar.
The Paschal Triduum or Easter Triduum, Holy Triduum, or the Three Days, is the period of three days that begins with the liturgy on the evening of Maundy Thursday, reaches its high point in the Easter Vigil, and closes with evening prayer on Easter Sunday. It is a moveable observance recalling the Passion, Crucifixion, Death, burial, and Resurrection of Jesus, as portrayed in the canonical Gospels.
In Mexico there are three major kinds of public holidays:
This is a list of public holidays in the Gambia.
The schedule of 10 public holidays in Singapore which are gazetted and recognized since the establishment of Singapore's 1998 Holidays Act.
The March equinox or northward equinox is the equinox on the Earth when the subsolar point appears to leave the Southern Hemisphere and cross the celestial equator, heading northward as seen from Earth. The March equinox is known as the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and as the autumnal equinox in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Feast of the Annunciation, in Greek, Ο Ευαγγελισμός της Θεοτόκου, contemporarily the Solemnity of the Annunciation, and also called Lady Day, the Feast of the Incarnation, or Conceptio Christi, commemorates the visit of the archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, during which he informed her that she would be the mother of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is celebrated on 25 March each year. In the Catholic Church, if 25 March falls during the Paschal Triduum, it is transferred forward to the first suitable day during Eastertide. In Eastern Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholicism, it is never transferred, even if it falls on Pascha (Easter). The concurrence of these two feasts is called Kyriopascha.
Lists of holidays by various categorizations.
This is a list of public holidays in Belize.
This is a list of public holidays in Guatemala.