Cinco curiosities for Cinco de Mayo
May 4, 2012 | 4:16 PM | By Leslie Berestein Rojas
No, this isn’t going to be one of those posts telling you that Cinco de Mayo isn’t Mexican independence day, and that it’s really a celebration of the Mexican army’s victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla in 1862. If you read this blog, you most likely know that.
It’s also not going to be a rant against the rampant commerce related to the holiday as a drinking-fest in the United States, because you already know about that, too. But there are other curious facets to how Cinco de Mayo is celebrated and used, for commercial and other purposes, in the U.S. And chances are you haven’t seen these compiled on one list. So let’s start.
1) There is epic avocado consumption
Superbowl Sunday has long been held as the day of days for guacamole-snarfing revelry each year, but Cinco de Mayo rivals it. One estimate this year cited 81 million pounds of avocados destined for the big 5/5 mashup, to be consumed on chips and taquitos by margarita-drinking party people. (And this is no news flash, but beer, tequila and chips sales get a nice boost, too.)
2) Not everyone knows the date that Cinco de Mayo falls on
I didn’t believe a colleague at first when he told me that he recently overheard someone at a gathering asking “When is Cinco de Mayo?” But indeed, such questions are asked. The name of the holiday is as calendar-explicit as, say, the Fourth of July, but perhaps it’s understandable to a degree. It’s in Spanish, after all, which for some remains a foreign language.
http://multiamerican.scpr.org/2012/05/cinco-curiosities-for-cinco-de-mayo/