WBOB Original Reads

POLL: What is Your Favorite Drinking Holiday?

5/3/2014

Kevin Aherne (@KAherne17)

Monday is May 5th--or Cinco de Mayo to those of us who understand how to tell time in Spanish.

To most Rhode Islanders, Cinco is simply another drinking holiday-- the third of the calendar year behind Super Bowl Sunday, and St. Patrick's Day, and ahead of Independence Day, Thanksgiving Eve, and New Year's Eve.

Vote for your favorite drinking holiday in the poll below

What is Cinco anyways?

While Americans celebrate the holiday as a day of drinking margaritas, Cinco de Mayo originated with Mexican-American communities in the American West as a way to commemorate the cause of freedom and democracy during the first years of the American Civil War, and today the date is observed in the United States as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride.

In the state of Puebla, the date is observed to commemorate theMexican army's unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín. Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico's Independence Day—the most important national patriotic holiday in Mexico—which is celebrated on September 16.