Venezuela : public and bank holidays, closure of banks, stock exchanges, school vacations

Catholic or protestant : Maundy Thursday: Commemorates the Last Supper when Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist (Lord's Supper).

Catholic or protestant : The First Council of Nicaea (a gathering of bishops in the early days of Christianity) wanted to find a day to commemorate the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. This commemoration had to be linked to Jewish holiday traditions, since the last supper of Christ was believed to be a Jewish Passover meal. But the Jewish calendar is based on lunar and solar cycles, so the Easter celebration had to follow the same calendar.

School holidays :

Secular holiday : On April 19, 1810, the Spanish governor was officially expelled from Venezuela, following Simon Bolivar's revolutionary action.

Secular holiday : Chicago, Saturday May 1st, 1886: 350,000 workers go on strike to call for an 8-hour working day. Industries are paralyzed nationwide. On Monday, as demonstrations go on, the police open fire. On Tuesday, Chicago is again on strike. Following a bomb launched against them, the police shoot again. 12 dead, of which 7 policemen. 8 anarchists will be condemned and executed. In 1889, the Socialist International Movement met in Paris and declared this day international workers' day . The Soviets will follow suit, just as the Nazis. In France, under the Vichy regime (1940-1944), the celebration is renamed Labour Day .

cards/flowers : Mother’s day has evolved in many countries in different ways. This is because mother’s day has different origins in different countries and therefore occurs on different days in the year. One school of thought claims that this day emerged from the custom of mother worship in ancient Greece. Mother worship which kept a festival to Cybele, a great mother of gods, and Rhea, the wife of Cronus, was held on March 15 to March 18 around Asia Minor. They insist that this custom spread around the world. Mothering Sunday is the celebration of motherhood in the United Kingdom. It is also known as Mid-lent Sunday, Rose Sunday and Laetare Sunday. It originally comes from the Victorian practice of allowing servants to return home to visit their mothers on this day. In the United States, Julia Ward Howe (May 27, 1819 - October 17, 1910) was a prominent American abolitionist, social activist, and poet. Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862 and quickly became one of the most popular songs for the Union during the American Civil War. After the war she focused her activities on the causes of Pacifism and women’s suffrage. In 1870 she was the first to proclaim Mother’s Day, with her Mother’s Day Proclamation. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson approved Mother’s Day in 1914

Banks only :

cards/flowers :

Culture : in El Callao

Culture : in El Callao

School holidays :

Banks only : Commemorates the Last supper. Pope Urban IV ordered the observance of such a feast in 1264, and in the following century it became universal in the Western Church. For six hundred years that feast was observed on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, but in 1970 the new Roman Missal, while retaining that day for some countries, provided that in others the feast be observed on the Sunday after Trinity.

cards/flowers :

Banks only :

Secular holiday : Bolivar's victory in 1823 over the Spanish army

Special Events :

Banks only : Christian holiday commemorating the date around 258, under the Valerian persecution, when what were believed to be the remains of the two apostles were both moved temporarily to prevent them from falling into the hands of the persecutors.

Secular holiday : Even though the actual independence was granted by Spain in 1830, claim for independence was declared in 1811, making Venezuela the first South American nation to declare independence

Secular holiday : Born in 1783

Banks only : The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is the dogma so far defined by the Church. The definition was made by Pope Pius XII on 1st November 1950. The Pope proclaimed: We pronounce, declare and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.

Banks only : A celebrated Catholic image of an alleged apparition of the Virgin Mary. In 1942, she was declared the Patroness of Venezuela.

School holidays :