As usual, May has had a lot of holy days. In Norway, many of the public holidays are based on Christian religious holy days, such as Christmas, Easter and Ascension. This year with Easter being early in April, May became a series of long weekends.
The 1st of May is Labour Day in many countries in Europe, including Norway. This year it came on a Saturday. As a teacher I didn’t get any extra day off, but the stores were closed and it felt like we had two Sundays in a row.
Ascension Day always comes on a Thursday and is a Christian holy day. It is the 40th day of Easter and commemorates the Ascension of Jesus. This year the schools were also closed on the following Friday, so we had both the 13th and the 14th off work. On the 14th stores, of course, were open, but many people had the day off work.
The Norwegian Constitution was signed in 1814 and is always celebrated on the 17th of May, regardless of which day of the week it comes on. This year it came on a Monday. Stores are always closed and there are parades and parties in every school area. In larger towns and cities there can be more than one parade in a day.
This then gave us teachers the 13th to the 17th off school, in other words a five-day weekend. Lovely.
But that wasn’t the end of the Norwegian public holidays for May. Whit Sunday (the 7th Sunday after Easter) is also an important holy day and the Monday after it is always a public holiday. This gave us two long weekends in a row, though the second one was only three days.
It doesn’t often happen that a Norwegian public holiday and a Canadian public holiday come on the same day, but this year the 24th of May was a holiday in both countries.
So, so far there have been four extra days when stores and work places have been closed in May.
Now, as a Bahá’í, I also have several holy days in May, days which I am encouraged to take free from work. The first one is the 2nd of May, the day that marks Bahá’u’lláh’s departure from the Gardens of Ridvan in Baghdad and the start of a long journey to Constantinople. This year my local Bahá’í community celebrated the day by visiting a Bahá’í who has multiple sclerosis.
On the 23rd of May we celebrate the first event in Bahá’í history, Mulla Husayn’s meeting with the Bab in the city of Shiraz. The Bab announced that he was the herald of a new messenger from God. We celebrated this historic occasion by hosting an Art Day, where participants made drawings or paintings, made delicious food (and ate it too), or made digital recordings of prayers in Norwegian.
On the 29th of May we remember the death of Bahá’u’lláh. He passed away in the middle of the night in 1892 in Akka, Israel. He was 75 years old.
This year I was lucky and didn’t have to try to take all these Bahá’í holy days off work as they are all on the weekends. But many years, I have to make the decision if I can take the time off work.
Well, let’s make a summary of the holy days and the other free days. Norwegian holy days include Ascension (13th) and Whit Sunday (23rd), Norwegian public holidays include Labour Day (1st), Constitution Day (17th), and Whit Monday (24th). Baha’i holy days include the 12th Day of Ridvan (2nd), the Declaration of the Bab (23rd) and the Ascension of Bahá’u’lláh (29th). That makes 7 special days out of 31. Note that the 23rd was both a Christian and a Bahá’í holy day. Not bad, for having extra free time.
I usually make use of these extra days off work to get going in my garden, enjoying the spring sunshine and warmth and getting into gear for the summer. However this year the weather was disappointing. To be honest, it was cold, with snow coming both on the 3rd and the 10th of the month!! Gardening has gone slowly, though the lawn has been cut once. When the sun does decide to shine, it warms up quite quickly and one day last week we actually ate dinner outside in the sunshine (and didn’t freeze).
I hope you that read this have also had an interesting May month.
Personally, I think there should be more May months in the year. Both in terms of holidays and warmth, May is what we need more of. I would be willing to trade February or November for an additional May month. In fact, I would be more than willing to forego both of these winter months, for an additional May (or June).