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Public Holidays and Bank Holidays for Bénin

Related and neighboring countries: Africa Burkina Faso Niger Nigeria Togo

The list of Bénin bank holidays, national holidays and public holidays for 2008, comes from the Q++ Worldwide Public Holidays Database, the professional source of international public holidays long trusted by the world's foremost diary publishers. The information on this page is provided for private, non-professional, use. Qualified professionals can license data for 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and beyond. For details, please visit our licensing information page or

 
At the bottom of this page:   Recent News and Updates    Background Information    Footnotes    Disclaimer
 

Date in 2008

Holiday Name Observance*
Tue New Year's Day
Thu Vaudoun Day
Thu The Prophet's Birthday (Maouloud)
* Sun Easter Christian
Mon Easter Monday
Thu Ascension Day
Thu Labour Day
* Sun Whit Sunday (Pentecost) Christian
Mon Whit Monday
Thu Public Holiday (Cardinal B. Gantin's Funeral)
Fri Independence Day
Fri Assumption Day
Wed Korité (End of Ramadan)
Sat All Saints' Day
Mon Tabaski (Feast of Sacrifice)
Thu Christmas Day

 © 1989-2008 Alter Ego Services

Recent News and Updates

16 May 2008 (Panafrican News Agency-PANA) The government of Benin has declared Thursday, May 22, 2008, as a one-off public holiday to allow Beninese citizens to pay their last tribute to Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, who died Tuesday in Paris at the age of 86.  01 Dec 2006 Next parliamentary elections - March 25, 2007.  More News Updates For the full version of the summarized news items above, and older news items not displayed above, go to the Bénin public holidays news and updates page, or worldwide public holidays news and updates page, or subscribe to one of our free email newsletters.


Background Information

Governing Law: Official public holidays in the Bénin are regulated by the "Ordonnance no 79-33 du 2 juillet 1979 fixant les fêtes légales en République populaire du Bénin".  Vaudoun Day is also called Voodoo Day or Traditional Religions Day. Although 65 percent of Benin's population believes in voodoo, the practice has historically been the target of discrimination and was even, at one point, subject to a government imposed ban. But, now, the festival has been a national holiday for a decade and in 2006 delegations from neighboring Togo and Ghana were represented, as well as tourists from as far away as the United States. The festival has gone global.  The public holidays of January 16 and October 26 were abandonned in 1990, although one still finds them listed on some web sites.  Other Sources of Information For information not covered here, see the following specialized websites: Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) (Bénin central bank), ASI Hot Spots (security-related world events: terrorist threats, political strife, strikes, criminal activity, aviation incidents and health outbreaks), CIA World Factbook (maps, demographic and economic statistics), Copp Clark (financial markets' trading hours, settlement holidays and currency non-clearing days), and the IFES Election Guide (information covering upcoming elections, referenda, electoral structures and past voter participation).


Footnotes
*

Observance : Any entry in the Observance column indicates that, in Bénin, the holiday may be regional or non-official or limited to certain religious and/or linguistic groups, or begin at a time other than midnight. Note that religious holidays are included only if they are national public holidays, or if the national labour code has specific holiday allowances for employees of specific religions. For more information, see our pages on the religious calendars of the world.

**

Religious Holidays : Public holidays in Bénin that are based on certain religious calendars may be subject to local variations due to differing interpretations between different religious authorities, or to seemingly arbitrary changes in the date a holiday is celebrated because it conflicts with another holiday that is based on another calendar, or because the day of the holiday is deemed inauspicious (bad luck). To find out more about these uncertainties, see the footnote below, if any, for each specific religion.

(2)

Muslim Holidays : Muslim bank holidays, legal holidays and public holidays for Bénin were evaluated using the Umm al-Qura Calendar of Saudi Arabia which is used in Saudi Arabia and in most of the Persian Gulf States. Holidays may occur a day later in countries outside the Gulf region. The sunrises, sunsets, moon phases, moonrises and moonsets used in these calculations are based on the location of Mecca (latitude 21.42°N, longitude, 39.82°E, GMT+3 hours, no summer time rules). For more details on Muslim holidays, see Muslim Calendar Holidays. For Salat (prayer times) calculations, see our Freeware page.


Disclaimer
In many parts of the world, holidays are subject to arbitrary, last minute, changes by local authorities. While every effort has been made to present an accurate list of 2008 bank holidays, legal holidays and public holidays for Bénin, we cannot accept any responsibility for any error or omission in the data presented above. You are therefore advised to verify the above dates with the embassy or consulate of Bénin, before planning any trip to Bénin. For last-minute updates to worldwide public holidays, visit our blog or subscribe to our free email newsletters.



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