Mother’s Day is celebrated in the United States on the second Sunday in May. The origins of Mother’s Day can be traced all the way back to the Greeks and Romans, but Mother’s Day as celebrated in US can more closely be linked to the UK where they celebrated “Mothering Sunday”. The current celebration is less than a hundred years old and was popularized by the hard work women like Julia Ward Howe and Anna Jarvis Today Mothers Day is celebrated in over 40 countries (on different dates). People all across the world use the day as an opportunity to pay respect to their mothers for giving them life, raising and supporting them.

March 17th marks the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, commemorating the anniversary of the death of St. Patrick in the fifth century. St. Patrick’s Day has been observed by the Irish as religious holiday for more than a thousand years. Irish families traditionally attended church in the morning and celebrated in the afternoon. St. Patrick’s Day occurs during Lent, but the prohibitions against the consumption of meat were waived so that people could drink, dance and feast. In modern-day Ireland, up until the 1970s, Irish laws required pubs to be closed on March 17. In 1995, however, the Irish government began to use St. Patrick’s Day as an opportunity to drive tourism to Ireland. Now, close to a million people take part in Ireland ‘s St. Patrick’s Festival in Dublin, a multi-day celebration that features concerts, a parade and fireworks.

The holiday of Valentine’s Day began in ancient Rome, where February 14th was a holiday to honor the Goddess Juno, queen of Roman Goddesses and Goddess of love and marriage. The following day was a feast day called the Feast of Lupercalia. St. Valentine was a priest in Rome in the days of Claudius II, around 250 AD. The unpopular Emperor was having a difficult time recruiting soldiers to join his army and believed that the reason was that the men did not want to leave their wives and families. In response, Claudius II canceled all engagements and marriages in Rome. St Valentine and St. Marius aided the Christians of the time by secretly marrying couples. St. Valentine was caught performing the banned marriages and brought before the Prefect of Rome. As punishment for his crime, he was sentenced to be beaten to death with clubs and beheaded. His execution occurred on the 14th day of February.

January 1st was celebrated as the New Year for the first time in 153 BC, when the King Numa Pontilius added January and February to the calendar. Previously, with only 10 months in the calendar, the New Year was recognized as March 1st. In 46 B.C., Julius Caesar officially replaced the lunar calendar with a new solar-based calendar and officially moved the start of the year to January 1st to coincide with the terms of newly elected Roman consuls. In various times throughout the Middle Ages, the New Year was celebrated on Dec. 25th to coincide with the birth of Jesus, March 25th when Christians celebrated the Feast of the Annunciation, and Easter. In 1582, the Gregorian calendar reform restored the 1st of January as the beginning of the year for Catholics, although Protestant countries took longer to adopt the reform. The British Empire and its colonies continued to celebrate March 1st as the New Year until 1752.

Father’s Day is celebrated on the third Sunday in June in the US, Canada and most countries in Asia. Other countries like Spain and Belgium celebrate Father’s Day on March 19t. Sweden celebrates it on the second Sunday of November, and New Zealand on the first Sunday of September. Despite the different days, the expression of gratitude and appreciation for dads seems to be universal. Today families show respect for all father figures honoring grandfathers, stepfathers, uncles and other adult male figures that hold a special place in their lives.  The origin of Father’s Day in 1909 is widely credited to Sonora Louise Smart Dodd, from Spokane, Washington, who heard a Sunday church sermon about Mother’s Day and questioned why there was no corresponding day for Fathers. She was raised by her own father, William Jackson Smart, on a rural farm in Washington state after her mother died in childbirth.