Germans Love David Hasselhoff/Holidays

• While Cinco de Mayo is rather popular and well-celebrated in the US, it has only limited recognition within its own country of origin, Mexico. Most Americans only know that it's about some sort of battle^[1], and most assume that it's the actual Mexican Independence Day, which it isn't.
• St. Patrick's Day in Ireland is a boisterous but religious holiday. Irish-Americans, however, turned it into a celebration of their unique immigrant culture. The first St Patrick's Day parade was in New York City in 1762, while the first in Ireland was in Dublin in 1931. Over the years it's become, like Cinco de Mayo, an excuse to throw a theme party and drink a lot. In England, St. Patrick's Day is also far more widely celebrated in England than St. George's Day, though mostly as an excuse for drinking. This can be largely attributed to the Guinness Corporation.
• Halloween is more popular in the US, despite its Irish origins as Oíche Shamhna, the ancient New Year's Day; the bridging of the boundary between years is mirrored by the weakening of the gap between the world of the living and that of the dead. Bonfire is a calque of the Irish tine cnámh, "bone fire". Americans turned it into a secular holiday about playful scares, costumes and candy. The new holiday has spread throughout countries such as Germany, Austria, and even back into Ireland, where the new style has largely replaced the old.
  • It's a double example in that the holiday is one of the many pagan holidays Hijacked by Jesus to help converts adjust to the new religion. All Hallow's Eve is the evening before All Saint's Day, was a minor prelude to the much larger celebration the next day, and was actually completely forgotten among Christians for years before some Americans decided to revive it and the modern version was born.
• Chanukah is more popular, proportionately, among Jews in the West than in Israel or elsewhere. Being the least important and most recently ordained holiday on the Jewish calendar, in Israel (where most of the population is Jewish and a significant number are Orthodox), it tends to be overshadowed by more serious holidays like Passover and Sukkot. American Jews, however, elevated the importance of Chanukah to compare with Christmas, so that they too could enjoy a "Holiday Season" with their Gentile neighbors. Jewish parents added the custom of gift-giving so their children would not feel left out (although there was an old tradition of giving money, or gelt, at Chanukah among Ashkenazi Jews, it apparently just isn't the same).
  • In modern Israel, Chanukah has gained some importance... as a nationalistic holiday celebrating Jewish military prowess, which is what the holiday originally meant.
• This happened with Christmas in Japan, in spite of the fact that Christians make up less than one percent of Japan's population. Not surprisingly, the holiday in Japan is extremely secular and is treated as a romantic holiday. The most unique aspect is the eating of Christmas cake, a white whipped cream cake with strawberries. It is also used in a common expression about the marriageable age of women.
  • Most unique aspect? Wouldn't that be the Christmas KFC bucket of chicken?
  • Speaking of which, KFCs are serious business during the Christmas season because the Japanese wanted to try that Christmas turkey dinner they see on American TV shows. The average Japanese household makes this impractical so fried chicken is the best substitute they can come up with.
• This can even occur within a single country. Columbus Day, which celebrates a Genoan's "discovery" of America, is infinitely more popular in New England and northern states. It is basically forgotten and unremarkable in other areas of the U.S., where Native American groups, due to the justified grievances that they have with Columbus, have been very successful in limiting its recognition. Unless you're trying to mail something, of course.
  • It might also have to do with respective populations of Italian immigrants and their descendants, which are higher in the northeast. A century or so ago, when it was difficult for Italians to assimilate in the U.S., they sometimes latched on to Columbus as a connection between ethnic pride and American patriotism ("Why are you calling me Italian like it's a bad thing? An Italian discovered your country!") and made it a bigger deal than it already was.
• Likewise, Mardi Gras is only a big celebration in South Louisiana and Mobile, Alabama, while in Europe it is a more common holiday. This is due to the fact that most American Christians are Protestants (one of the few Christian nations in which that is the case) and Mardi Gras is supposed to commemorate Fat Tuesday, the very last day before Lent fasting begins for Catholics.
  • Depends on your definition of "few". Nearly all Germanic language countries (minus southern Germany, Austria, and Flanders but adding Finland to complete the Scandinavian sweep) are predominantly Protestant. Within Germany, while the popularity of similar holidays (Karneval, Fasching, Fastnacht) is waaaaaaaaaay bigger in the Catholic parts, they are also celebrated in the Protestant area.
  • The important thing here is that, unlike Germany, American Protestantism is in the Reformed/Calvinist tradition, while all of the Continental European Protestant countries, save the Netherlands and the Protestant parts of Switzerland, are overwhelmingly Lutheran. Lutheranism, much like Anglicanism, kept many features of the Catholic system, including Lent and its associated festivities. The Reformed tradition (which includes the Congregationalists, the Baptists, the Presbyterians, and the descendant movements thereof), on the other hand, criticized fasting and did not observe Lent or celebrate its associated holidays.
  • It should be added that in Australia, although mainly the in Sydney, Mardi Gras is treated as a gay pride holiday, and attracts about 70,000 people each year and earns the city 30 million dollars in tourism income.
• Even the Fourth of July is not immune to this trope. After the American Civil War, the people of Vicksburg, Mississippi did not celebrate the holiday until it was made a federal holiday in 1931, as that day marked the surrender of the town to Union forces.
• Casimir Pulaski Day (first Monday in March) is another probably less well known version of this trope -- less well known because it's only observed by Illinois, and to a lesser extent Wisconsin and Indiana. It seems a little strange at first for a state to have a full holiday (schools, libraries, and government offices closed) for a guy who never even set foot there, but given the large Polish population in Chicago, it does make some sense. Outside of this area, the only people who are likely to know of the holiday are fans of Sufjan Stevens.
  • To be fair, Chicago has more ethnically Polish residents than Warsaw, and Wisconsin is the most Polish state in America per capita.
• Lucia, 13th December. Sweden, a Protestant country, celebrating the Catholic St. Lucy.
  • Finland, because of being occupied by Sweden for something like 700 years, celebrates Lucia too. Not quite as much, but you can still see little girls dressed up as Lucia on the 13th of December.
• The United Kingdom has no national day equivalent to Bastille day or the 4th of July. That has not stopped Hamburg from celebrating British Day every 5th and 6th of September.
  • Well, yes, but that dates back to when Britain and Hanover were ruled by one monarch, as Hamburg was closely connected to the Kingdom of Hanover. Additionally, Hanover was part of the British Zone of Occupation after World War II.
• In Maine and Massachusetts, anybody will tell you that Patriots' Day is the third Monday of April, commemorating the Battle of Lexington and Concord- you know, the first battle of the American Revolution? Outside of there, people seem to think it's September 11th.
• St. Joseph's Day in Rhode Island is a pretty big deal. It's on par with St. Patrick's Day (which is also big in RI) in terms of celebration but it's more food oriented than St. Patrick's Day. This is due to the high Italian-American population in the state.
  • Rhode Island still celebrates the end of World War Two long after every country involved had stopped.
• What is Evacuation Day? If you live in Boston (but not smaller towns in Massachusetts), you'd know that it commemorates the day that the British evacuated the city. It's celebrated on March 17 (St. Patrick's Day) and kids get the day off from school. Schools are also closed on June 17 to commemorate Bunker Hill Day in the same areas of Massachusetts.

1. ↑ It commemorates the Battle of Puebla in 1862, when the French invasion of Mexico was temporarily stalled by a much smaller Mexican force.You can read more here.