#FunFactFriday – May Holidays

Happy May and happy Cinco de Mayo! May has a couple of fun holidays so instead of sharing fun facts about just one, I’ve decided to choose several holidays!
Cinco de Mayo

1. Contrary to popular belief, Cinco de Mayo is NOT Mexico’s Independence Day. It simply commemorates the date the Mexican Army won an unlikely victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. Mexico’s actual Independence Day is Sept. 16.
2. Cinco de Mayo is just like any other day in Mexico…offices, banks and stores remain open.
3. According to the California Avocado Commission (who knew there was such a thing?!), Americans consume 81 million pounds of avocados on Cinco de Mayo every year.
4. Chandler actually celebrates Cinco de Mayo with a Chihuahua race!

May Day
First off, I didn’t even realize this was a holiday, but apparently the first of May is called May Day.

1. May Day has no association with the distress signal “mayday” which comes from the French “m’aider” (pronounced mayday).
2. May Day is a celebration of several things—fertility, the working people, spring.
3. One of the greatest traditions of Mayday is dancing around the maypole, which continues to be practiced to this day.
4. May Day is not celebrated much in the U.S. dating back to colonial times, as Puritans looked down on the holiday.

Mother’s Day

1. In a large majority of languages, the word for mother begins with the letter “m.”
2. Mother’s day was designated an official holiday on the second Sunday of May on May 8, 1914 by Woodrow Wilson after a tireless campaign by Anna Jarvis.
3. In the U.S. nearly $14 billion is spent on Mother’s Day and 122 million phone calls are made to moms.

Memorial Day

1. It was originally called Decoration Day honoring fallen soldiers. It didn’t officially become Memorial Day until 1967. Decoration Day was originally created to honor the fallen of the Civil War.
2. Americans are legally required to observe a National Moment of Remembrance and pause at 3 p.m. on Memorial Day to honor the fallen. Most people don’t know this or do this, however.
3. Waterloo, N.Y. won congressional recognition as the “birthplace of Memorial Day.”