Holidays & Festivals

Ireland:
Holidays:
Holidays in Ireland include New Year’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day (March 17), Good Friday, Easter Monday, spring and summer bank days in May, June and August, Christmas Day and Boxing Day (December 26).

Festivals:
Of course the biggest festival in Ireland is Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Day Festival (March 13 – 17). Crowds reach up to one million for the carnivals, theater, dance and music that fills the streets. Other festivals are the Heineken Green Energy Festival (April – May), Handel’s Messiah Festival (April), International Dance Festival (late April), Dublin City Soul Festival (May), the Summer in Dublin Rose Festival (July), the Belfast Festival at Queens (October – November) featuring music, theater and dance, and Derry’s Foyle Film Festival (November – December), which is the premiere film festival in Northern Ireland.

Some of the festivals in other areas of Ireland are the Rose of Tralee (County Kerry), the Killarney Summer Racing Festival (County Kerry), Cork Choral Festival (County Cork), and the Cork Jazz Festival (County Cork). The Rose of Tralee is an interesting event in which women from different communities compete in a beauty pageant to be crowned the “Rose of Tralee.” In Waterford, the Spraoi Street Festival (August) is noted as “The Biggest Street Carnival in Ireland.” The streets of Waterford are transformed into a stage for musicians and theatrical performers.