Latvia has 15 official holidays. During these days, all public and municipal institutions, industrial enterprises, many shops and markets are closed and public transportation follows a weekend time schedule.

Official holidays in Latvia are:

• January 1 - New Year's Day;
• Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Easter Monday;
• May 1 - Labor Day and the convocation of the Constitutional Assembly in 1920;
• May 4 - Declaration of Independent Republic of Latvia in 1990;
• Second Sunday in May - Mother's Day;
• Whitsunday;
• June 23 and 24 - Summer Solstice; Midsummer Eve and Midsummer;
• November 18 - Proclamation of the Republic of Latvia in 1918;
• December 24, 25 and 26 - Christmas;
• December 31 - New Year's Eve.

The most important public holidays are on May 4 and November 18. If these days happen to fall on Saturday or Sunday, next Monday is an official holiday.

Some of these days - Christian celebrations - are alway on Sundays so they are holidays even if they are not declared as such. Easter Sunday, Mother's Day and Whitsunday fall on Sunday.

June 23 and 24 usually see people leaving cities to celebrate the traditional festivity in the countryside. As all Latvians have close akin to nature and almost everybody has a family member living outside cities and towns, most Rigans celebrate Summer Solstice somewhere by a campfire, a river, a lake or the sea.

Latvia also marks several memorial days when flags are flown with mourning ribbons. These days are:

March 25 and June 14 - Commemoration Day of Victims of Communist Terror (tens of thousands of Latvian people were deported by the Totalitarian Communist Regime on these dates in 1941 and 1949);

July 4 - Commemoration Day of Genocide against the Jews (Riga Choral Synagogue was burned down in 1941);

December 5 - Commemoration Day of Victims of Genocide Against the Latvian People by the Totalitarian Communist Regime (the Day commemorates the mass extermination campaign against Latvians living in the USSR in the 1930s).