ethnic holidays on US weekends

In America, a land where many have cultural ideas to an older country, people also celebrate the culture of their past. Some things are run by the week's calendar. Saturday and Sunday is the weekend, the other days are generally business days. The US has a dearth of holidays, and there was the successful push to create Monday holidays starting in 1971. First this was a federal governmental item, but immediately picked up universally. It is part three day weekend, and part convenience to business.

This year, the Polish Constitution holiday, the 3rd of May falls on Friday. In America, this is celebrated only in towns with a sizable Polish population and the rest of the society does not know of (or allow for) its occurrence, so the celebration must fall during the weekend. A Polish civic holiday is not readily divorceable from cultural and religious life, and that for most purposes is Catholicism; so it is often marked on Sunday afternoons after Mass. Now, a popular Mexican holiday is the celebration of the victory of Puebla, which is the 5th of May. In the last few years across the US this celebration has expanded, for some it is cultural and for some it is commercial. Now, in Cleveland the city government acknowledged the celebration in City Hall with a luncheon on Friday the 3rd, in which a mariachi quintet played. A Mexican flag also flew for the day from the building, replacing the Ohio swallowtail.