Holy Days and Holidays?

[Kielbasi]

Its been postulated that the original dates of Christmas and Easter were established to coincide with the secular and pagan holidays of ancient times.

Would you think it would be a good idea to move the Immaculate Conception and are other current holy days to existing civil holidays that we already celebrate here in the United States? Offices are closed , people are home from work and school and would be more available for the holiday.

Would it be positive, or negative, to move the Immaculate Conception to coincide with Thanksgiving, or All Saints to coincide with Veterans Day?

In many foreign countries, of course, the Holy Days are indeed civil holidays already.

 

[benedictgal]

The Church doesn’t quite work that way. For example, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is on September 8th. The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception is December 8th, exactly nine months before the birth of the Blessed Mother. All Saints Day has a very ancient tradition similar to the one that the OP described for Christmas. Now, Easter is calculated based, in some part, to Passover, although they don’t always fall on the same date.

The Holy Days of Obligation are pretty much set by the Church (read: Universal). The dates are not negotiable, unless, as in the case of December 8th (when it falls on Sunday, it is moved to Monday, December 9th because Sundays in Advent trump feasts). Ditto for the Feast of the Annunciation. Although this is not a holy day of obligation, it is moved to the Monday after the Sunday of Lent or, if it falls during Holy Week, it is moved to Easter week.

 

[Digitonomy]

I don’t think there would be much advantage to that, other than allowing more people to attend mass. The secular holidays are “bigger” than the holy days in this country, and so many Catholics would simply get used to the fact that Thanksgiving is a day of obligation rather than remembering that it’s the Immaculate Conception. We already have that for New Years Day, which few could have told you was the World Day of Prayer for Peace, and few now could tell you is the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.

It would also be a bad PR move regarding Veterans’ Day - there was talk of moving Election Day to Veterans’ Day after the 2000 election debacle, but veterans felt their holiday was being hijacked, and that they would be ignored if everyone got the day off to vote. So instead few get the day off, and veterans and their day are generally ignored anyway.