National Holiday (Quebec)

Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day
Saint-Jean-Baptiste parade, Montreal, June 24, 2006
Also called	Fête de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste, La Saint-Jean, Fête nationale, National Holiday
Observed by	Quebecers, French Canadians, French Americans
Type	Historical, cultural, national, religious
Celebrations	Parades, bonfires, fireworks, feasting, drinking, musical concerts, flag waving, patriotic speeches, contests
Date	June 24
Next time	24 June 2017 (2017-06-24)
Frequency	annual

Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day (French: Fête de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste), officially known in Quebec as the National Holiday, (French: la fête nationale) is a holiday celebrated annually on June 24, the feast day of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. In Quebec, it is a public holiday with festivities occurring on June 23 and 24 which are publicly financed and organized by a Comité organisateur de la fête nationale (National Holiday Organizing Committee). June 24 is also celebrated as a festival of French Canadian culture in other Canadian provinces and the United States.

The feast day of Saint John the Baptist or Midsummer was a very popular event in the Ancien Régime of France, and it is still celebrated as a religious feast day in several countries, like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Spain, Latvia and Lithuania.

The tradition landed in Canada with the first French colonists. The first mention of celebrations of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in North America dates back to 1606, when settlers en route to the future Acadia rested on the coast of Newfoundland, June 23. The second mention of celebrations, according to the Jesuit Relations, occurred on the banks of the Saint Lawrence River on the evening of June 23, 1636, with a bonfire and five cannon shots.

In Lower Canada, the celebration of the nativity of St. John the Baptist took a patriotic tone in 1834 on the initiative of one of the founders of the newspaper La Minerve, Ludger Duvernay, who would later become the first president of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society. In the spring of 1834, Duvernay and other patriotes attended the celebrations of the first St. Patrick's Day, the celebration of the Irish diaspora, in Montreal. This would have given him and others the idea of organizing something similar for all the Canadiens and their friends.