We Irish could plausibly be accused of being unimaginative for taking a day off today for no better reason than that it happens to be early August. Other cultures often pin their holidays to some historical event, to an ethnic aspiration, or to some sea-change in their national Zeitgeist. When the French, for example, introduced their Revolutionary Calendar in 1792, and divided the year into 12 months of 30 days, they found they had 5 days left over - by our reckoning, September 17th to 21st inclusive every year.
Since these seemed to serve no other purpose in the scheme of things, someone had the excellent idea that they should be designated national holidays: they were dedicated respectively to the ideals of virtue, genius, labour, opinion and rewards.
Even today, October 9th each year is the Day of the Korean Alphabet; Bhutan commemorates the First Sermon of the Lord Buddha on July 21st, and Benin has Feed Yourself Day in December. More enigmatically, June 22nd in the Yemen is celebrated as the Day of the Corrective Move.
The first recorded instance of a public holiday is to be found in the early pages of the Book of Genesis. "On the seventh day", we are told, "God's handiwork was finished, and he rested on that seventh day from all the work that he had done." The ancient Greeks for their part had four major festivals during which everyone downed tools, the best known being the Olympian festival of games held at midsummer every fourth year.
The Romans divided the days of every month into dies fasti and nefasti - days on which business might be transacted, and those on which it was thought improper for anyone to do so. Among the latter was the fertility festival of Lupercal on February 15th, to which can be traced the customs of St Valentine's Day, and the Saturnalia, from December 17th to 19th - the prototype, if not the origin, of the Christmas celebrations that we still endure today.
As Rome became imperial, the dies nefasti got a little out of hand. Emperors proclaimed more and more festive occasions, and up to half the days of the year became public holidays. On such days hundreds of thousands of spectators would descend on Rome's many amphitheatres to watch the gruesome spectacles on show.
Duas tantum res anxius optat: panem et circenses, laments Juvenal of the average Roman citizen in the second century: "Only two things does he worry about or long for: bread and circuses." And so, some might say, mutatis mutandis, human nature has remained until this very day.