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For certain of these days, additional rules for their observance are applied. Days which fall on a Saturday or Sunday are typically observed on the following Monday or the preceding Friday. In most cases, the rule for observance has itself been changed for the federal holiday. In these cases, there are, in effect, two days of observance by the same name the traditional one, and the federal variant, designated as observed. |
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Columbus Day is one of those days for which there are two different definitions. The rule for the traditional date is the fixed-date rule of 12 October. The rule for the observed date is the second Monday in October. The observed date is normally the one observed as a bank holiday. |
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6.2.2.2
Nth DOW of the Month |
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A large number of days of observance are defined by this rule. This section will consider only two, chosen because they illustrate some typical problems and considerations. |
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In the United States, the day called Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. A day by the same name is celebrated in Canada on the second Monday in October, marking our first caveat. Two different days of observance in two different countries may share the same name. |
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The first American Thanksgiving was entirely a religious event, occurring on 4 December 1619. The 38 English settlers who arrived at Berkeley Plantation on the James River had a charter which decreed that their day of arrival be celebrated yearly. |
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The Pilgrims celebrated a day of thanksgiving at Plymouth Rock in 1621, joined in a three-day feast by Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag and about 90 members of his tribe. |
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The Episcopal Church and many states declared a day of thanksgiving at various times, but it was not until 1863 that Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a day of thanksgiving. Each year thereafter, the day was proclaimed, for 75 years. |
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In 1939, however, Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the day to occur one week earlier, in order to allow more time for Christmas shopping. Apparently, this bit of autocracy was too much, even for the rubber stamp New Deal Congress of the day, and Congress declared in 1941 that the fourth Thursday in November would be the legal federal holiday after 1941. |
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Here are three more caveats. First, the existence of a current rule for the definition of a day of observance does not imply that the same rule, or that any rule, was necessarily followed in earlier times. |
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Second, politicians will muck with days of observance whenever they see fit, if they are allowed to do so. The mucking is often predictable, since it serves the political purposes of the times. |
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