Holiday musings

Holidays can be confusing.

Yesterday, my daughter, who lives in Montréal, told me that she had a long weekend, as today is a public holiday in Canada. Apparently, it’s Victoria Day – to celebrate the birthday of Queen Victoria. I guess any excuse will do to justify a holiday at the beginning of the summer. Of course, being Québec, things are not that simple, and to maintain the French/English duality, provincial legislation has officially named the same date as Victoria Day the Journée nationale des patriotes.

In England, Whit Monday used to be a holiday, until the late 1960s when it moved for a trial period to the last Monday in May (confirmed in law since 1971). It’s notable that all public holidays in the UK are on fixed days of the week (except for Christmas/Boxing Day and New Year – but even they are moved to Monday/Tuesday if they would fall on a weekend). Still, no holiday today in Britain.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

I have two calendars on my computer which show public holidays as well as appointments which I enter. One of them says today is Whit Monday – a public holiday. The other doesn’t. So if I make my planned trip to the baker’s, will the shop be open or not?

En France, avant la Révolution, la semaine qui suivait la Pentecôte (octave de la Pentecôte) était fériée. Le Concordat de 1801 a réduit le caractère férié au seul Lundi de la Pentecôte.

Le lundi de Pentecôte a été jour férié d’après la loi du 8 mars 1886 et l’est toujours resté sans autre particularité jusqu’en 2004.

Entre 2004 et 2007, suite à la décision du gouvernement Raffarin d’en faire un Journée de solidarité envers les personnes âgées, il reste férié mais devient non chômé pour beaucoup d’entreprises. Il redevient simplement férié dès 2008 à l’exception de certaines branches relevant de l’État, telle l’Armée de Terre.

Wikipedia.fr

That’s clear, then. Before the revolution, everyone had a whole week off after Pentecost. In the 19th century this was reduced to just the Monday. This lasted until 2004, when Whit Monday became a working day, with the government making a levy on firms to raise money for the elderly – following the deadly heatwave of 2003, which led to thousands of deaths across France. Workers, not surprisingly, protested and in 2008 the government gave way. The levy remains, but Whit Monday (Lundi de Pentecôte) is not a working day.

I’ll not bother going to the baker’s then. Instead I can ponder on why this particular Monday is Whit Monday. It’s too hot to work outside in the middle of the day, so I can exercise my brain instead.

The full list of French public holidays is as follows

What about these “moveable” holidays then? All three movable dates are linked to Easter. And despite this being one of the major occasions of the Christian Year, its date is determined by complex calculations relating to the moon.

The moon? Well, not even the real moon!

Easter is the Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon. The Paschal Full Moon may occur from March 21 to April 18. Thus the date of Easter can be anywhere from March 22 to April 25. The date of the Paschal full moon is determined by calculation, and it may differ from the date of the actual full moon by up to two days. This definition that uses arbitrary calculation instead of actual observations of the full moon is apparently useful and necessary since the real full moon may occur on different dates depending where you are in the world.

According to Wikipedia, the calculations to determine the date of the Paschal full moon are somewhat complex, but can be described briefly (!) as follows

Nineteen civil calendar years are divided into 235 lunar months of 30 and 29 days each (the so-called “ecclesiastical moon”.) The period of 19 years (the metonic cycle) is used because it produces a set of civil calendar dates for the ecclesiastical moons that repeats every nineteen years while still providing a reasonable approximation to the astronomical facts. The first day of each of these lunar months is the ecclesiastical new moon. Exactly one ecclesiastical new moon in each year falls on a date between March 8 and April 5 inclusive. This begins the paschal lunar month for that year, and thirteen days later is the paschal full moon. Easter is the Sunday following the paschal full moon. In other words, Easter falls from one to seven days after the paschal full moon, so that if the paschal full moon is on Sunday, Easter is the following Sunday.

Those of a mathematical bent might prefer this expressed as an algorithm:

In the text below, / represents an integer division neglecting the remainder, while % is division keeping only the remainder. So 30/7=4 , and 30%7=2 .

a=year%19
b=year/100
c=year%100
d=b/4
e=b%4
f=(b+8)/25
g=(b-f+1)/3
h=(19*a+b-d-g+15)%30
i=c/4
k=c%4
l=(32+2*e+2*i-h-k)%7
m=(a+11*h+22*l)/451
Easter Month =(h+l-7*m+114)/31 [3=March, 4=April]
p=(h+l-7*m+114)%31
Easter Date=p+1 (date in Easter Month)

Calculation of the Ecclesiastical Calendar by Marcos Montes

Apparently, the cycle of Easter dates repeats only every 5,700,000 years. If you are really interested, you can find out why, and much, much more about Easter and other calendar facts, at the Calendar FAQ

And if you have followed everything up to this point, well done. You deserve a holiday!