HAPPY 2013!

Life must go on, but first let´s take a look at the national holidays for 2013:

• January 1 – New Year´s Date - Celebrates the beginning of the Gregorian calendar year. Festivities include counting down to midnight on the preceding night. Traditional end of the holiday season.
• February 12 – Carnaval - is an annual festival held forty days (or six weeks) before the beginning of Easter, ie. in the days immediately before Lent. On certain days of Lent, Roman Catholics and some other Christians traditionally abstained from the consumption of meat and poultry, hence the term "carnival," from carnelevare, "to remove (literally, "raise") meat."
• February 13 – Ash Wednesday - Ash Wednesday, in the calendar of Western Christianity, is the first day of Lent and occurs 46 days before Easter. Ash Wednesday derives its name from the practice of placing ashes on the foreheads of adherents as a sign of mourning and repentance to God.
• March 29 – Passion of Christ - It is the Christian theological term used for the events and suffering – physical, spiritual, and mental – of Jesus in the hours before and including his trial and execution by crucifixion. 
• March 31 – Easter - It is a Christian festival and holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day after his crucifixion at Calvary as described in the New Testament
• April 21–  Tiradentes´ Day - Anniversary of the death of Tiradentes (1792), considered a national martyr for being part of the Inconfidência Mineira, an insurgent movement that aimed to establish an independent Brazilian republic.
• May 1  – Labor Day
• May 12 – Mothers´ Day
• May 30 – Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday - It commemorates the Maundy and Last Supper of Jesus Christ with the Apostles as described in the Canonical gospels.
• June 12 – Valentines´ Day
• August 11  – Fathers´ Day
•  September 7 – Independence Day - It celebrates the Declaration of Independence from Portugal on September 7, 1822.
• October 12 – Our Lady of Aparecida - It commemorates the Virgin Mary as Nossa Senhora da Conceição Aparecida, Patron Saint of Brazil. Also celebrated as Children's Day (Dia das Crianças) on the same date.
• October 15 – Teacher´s Day
• November 2 – Day of the Dead - The holiday focuses on visiting graveyards to pray for and remember family members who have died
• November 15 – Republic Day - It celebrates the end of the Empire of Brazil and the proclamation of the Brazilian Republic on November 15, 1889.
• December 25 – Christmas