For about as long as I´ve been here, I have been meaning to add up the number of holidays that Brasileans celebrate every year, because it has always seemed to me that they have a lot of them.
Officially there appear to be 11 national holidays, four of which are distinctly religious (Good Friday, Corpus Christi, Our Lady of Aperecida, and All Souls Day), or five, if you want to insist Christmas is still a religious holiday, the case for which may be stronger in Brasil than in the US.
But this number doesn´t tell the whole story. For example, Carnaval Monday is a national holiday but, in reality, the following Tuesday (Shrove Tuesday) and Wednesday (Ash Wednesday) are also holidays. I remember how deserted the city was for those three days this year and how one friend and I had to rearrange a lunch schedule to find a restaurant that was going to be open on Tuesday.
These 11 days are augmented by additonal holidays that are specific to a state or city. There are at least 2 days that are celebrated only in the state of São Paulo.
Finally, it appears that mid-week holidays frequently spill over into other days. Corpus Christi day was on July 9th this year, which was a Thursday. For all practical porpoises, it was a 4-day holiday except for the unlucky people in retail jobs.
And there was another mysterious Thursday holiday in mid to late June which I can´t find on any of the internet lists. I remember it because Thursday is one of my assigned days at the gym, and there have already been two Thursdays since my membership started in June when it was closed for a holiday.
I can see that there have been legislative attempts at the national level to move mid-week holidays to either Monday or Friday, but I have no idea how likely that is to occur. I know I wouldn´t bet on it. And I hope it doesn´t happen. Life is too short to always organize it around ideas of sound business efficiency or similar practical concerns. The whole world need not emulate the Yankee model.
3 comments:
That's the funniest! I believe the mysterious holiday is about the ratial celebration. It's brand new. We have the municipal holidays too. By the way the oficial holiday in Carnaval is Tuesday (the famous Mardigras, or Terça-feira Gorda, as it's called here) and is a catholic holiday too. Wednesday is not holiday, but most services just start after noon and it's called Quarta-feira de Cinzas (Ashes Wednesday). 40 days after it is Easter, this wednesday is the begining of Quaresma (40 days to the death of Jesus, when in the Middle Ages Catholics used to not eat, and be more religious, after the big Carnaval party!!!).
Gerald, o dia 9 de julho é feriado estadual da Revolução Constitucionalista de 1932. A defining moment for the history of São Paulo. O obelisco em frente ao parque do Ibirapuera também é em homenagem aos heróis desse evento.
Don´t know where I was doing by investigations to come up with 9 July as Corpus Christi. Even wikipedia agrees with Alexandre. Of course, he could have written it himself.
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