Christmas in July of July (Canada Day on July 1 in Canada and American Independence Day on July 4 in the United States) and Labor/Labour Day (the first Monday in September for both the US and Canada), leaving a stretch of about two months with no holidays (some Canadian provinces hold a Civic Holiday, but neither Canada nor the United States has ever recognized a national holiday during that month). The late July period provides relatively few opportunities for merchandising, since it is typically after the peak of summer product sales in June and early July, but before the "back to school" shopping
Labor Day By the time it became an official federal holiday in 1894, thirty U.S. states officially celebrated Labor Day. All U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and the United States territories have subsequently made Labor Day a statutory holiday. The date of May 1 (an ancient European folk holiday known as May Day) emerged in 1886 as an alternative holiday for the celebration of labor, later becoming known as International Workers' Day. The date had its origins at the 1885 convention of the American Federation of Labor, which passed a resolution calling for adoption of the eight-hour day effective May 1,