Good news for Singaporeans hankering for a weekend getaway in 2023: Vesak Day, which would have originally been on 3 Jun 2023, has been revised to 2 Jun, which is a Friday.
This means that there’ll now be seven long weekends next year.
Vesak Day is a Buddhist holiday that normally falls on the full moon day of the lunar month of Vesakha.
The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) announced the change on 29 Sep after the Singapore Buddhist Federation (SBF) made the revision.
Source: Singapore Buddhist Federation
Explaining the reason for the change, the SBF said that,
Upon receiving feedback from members of (the) public), we have verified (Vesak Day’s) date against other Chinese almanacs and have established that based on the Mahayana tradition, the date of Vesak Day 2023 shall fall on 2 June 2023 which coincides with the 15th day of the fourth Lunar Month.
The federation apologised for any inconvenience caused and pledged to conduct additional checks to prevent similar occurrences.
These are the public holidays next year, as well as the days they fall on:
Tuesday (24 Jan) will be a public holiday, MOM said.
This makes for seven long weekends in 2023.
Vesak Day traditionally falls on either April, May, or June, and is meant to celebrate the birth of Siddhartha Gautama.
Although his birthday is not known, the 15th day of the fourth lunar month is typically picked as the day of celebration.
Buddhists usually gather at temples to pray, before conducting processions down the street with Buddha statues. Some may elect to only eat vegetarian food on Vesak Day as well.
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Featured image adapted from Roots.sg.
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