How does Taiwan mark Mother's Day?
母親節
- Local date
- May 9, 2027
- When is it?
- The second Sunday of May; the regulations explicitly state it is not a holiday
Taiwan's Mother's Day is the second Sunday in May. The Act on Commemorative Days and Holidays names it as a festival, but the same article states that festivals other than a listed few 'shall not be days off'. So it is recognised in law while leaving no mark on the calendar: the carnations, the cake and the restaurant all happen inside the Sunday people already had. Being written into a statute and still given no leave is itself a position.The same article gives a day off to Children's Day, Tomb-Sweeping Day, Labour Day, the Dragon Boat Festival, Teachers' Day and the Mid-Autumn Festival — Mother's Day is not among them. Naming a festival in law without granting leave is an explicit second list in this act, and Mother's Day belongs to it. Mother's Day in Taiwan is not a day off, but because it always falls on a Sunday that hardly constrains it — restaurant bookings on this day are among the highest peaks of the year and are usually full a month ahead. Set beside Father's Day, which belongs to the same family relation but lands on a weekday, the single design choice of fixing the date to a Sunday makes a large difference in how far each day can actually be carried out.
What is this topic?
Four places keep Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May; Indonesia keeps it on 22 December — and there it is not a day for thanking mothers but a political commemoration of the first Indonesian Women's Congress of 1928.
This page compares how the day was established in each place: a congressional resolution, a statute that names it and explicitly gives no day off, a peak in the cut-flower trade, or the starting point of a women's movement.
🗳️ What about you?
In your family, how is Mother's Day usually spent?
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Sources and dates
Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.
