Argentinian Holidays

After reading all the information that Dennis had uploaded about the U.S., I decided to choose one of all those topics and offer some brief comments about the holidays in Argentina. So, here it goes...

Firstly, there is one important thing to mention and it´s that in our country we have plenty of holidays. Besides Easter, Christmas and New Year´s Eve, we have quite a lot of the so called “patriotic dates”...Actually, we have one per month (!!!). All these dates had been selected by the national government during the XIX century wihtin a “nationalistic trend”...in other words, there was an aim to achieve and this was to generate a sort of “national identity” among the population.

In a chronological order, the 25^th of May has the leading role and during this day we remember a very important event of our history which was the “May Revolution”, in 1810. In spite of the fact that compared to the French one, our Revolution seems really tiny, this day can be understood as a breaking point because it represented the first step towards our independence...Even though we didn´t get this one until 1816, the 25^th of May was the day when the consciousness of freedom appeared in a “massive” way....So, after this day and during the next six years, our politicians and our poorly self-mafe army fought different battles and finally we got our independence, which was declared the 9^th July of 1816....

However, 25^th of May and 9^th of July are only two important dates whithin a long list of celebrations...(If I keep on telling you the story of each day, this comment will turn to such a boring one !!!! I´ll just mention some other days…) We also have a “Flag Day” on the 20^th of June, 17^th of August “San Martin´s Day” (this man was a very important army leader who was also involved in many other southamerican countries´ independence) and 12^th of October, “The discovernment of America” by Cristopher Columbus.

More recently established are the 24^th of March (installation of the last dictatorship in Argentina, 1976) and the 2^nd of April, day when we remember “Malvinas´ War” (1982).

(I dont know if I´ve missed any...) Anyway, it cannot be said that we do not celebrate our national History...hahaha.....Apart of all these days, during the last decades, we`ve “importing” foreign celebrations such as “St. Valentine`s”, “Halloween” and “St. Patrick”, as well.....Globalization effects, perhaps…But this is another story..!!

That´s all for now people....

All the best,

Ceci.-