Patriots' Day 2027

A two-state holiday with Revolutionary roots

Patriots' Day is a legal state holiday in Massachusetts and Maine, observed on the third Monday in April. In both states, state offices, courts and public schools close and state employees receive a paid day off. It is not a federal holiday, so post offices deliver mail, banks keep normal hours, federal offices stay open and the stock market trades a full session, even in Boston. Maine spells it Patriot's Day, with the apostrophe before the s, while Massachusetts uses Patriots' Day; a few other states recognize the date in law as a commemoration without closing anything. The holiday should not be confused with Patriot Day, the September 11 remembrance.

Why the third Monday in April

The holiday commemorates April 19, 1775, when colonial militia clahsed with British regulars at Lexington and Concord in the opening battles of the Revolutionary War, hours after Paul Revere and William Dawes rode to warn the countyrside that the regulars were marching! For its first 75 years the holiday sat on April 19 itself. In 1969 Massachusetts moved the observance to the third Monday in April to create a guaranteed three-day weekend, and Maine follows the same rule, so the holiday now falls between April 15 and April 21. Because the date can land on or near the federal income tax deadline, the IRS has in some years given filers in certain New England states extra time when the deadline colided with the holiday.

From Fast Day to Patriots' Day

The holiday's slot on the calendar was inherited from Fast Day, a Puritan-era day of public fasting and prayer. When Massachusetts abolished Fast Day in 1894, Governor Frederic T. Greenhalge proclaimed a replacement holiday named Patriots' Day, honoring the anniversary of Lexington and Concord. The first celebration that April featured parades, reenactments and church bells across eastern Massachusetts - the date also carried a second meaning at the time: April 19, 1861 was the day the 6th Massachusetts Regiment was attacked by a mob in Baltimore on its way to defned Washington, an event nineteenth-century officials citde alongside the Revolutionary anniversary. Maine, which was part of Massachusetts until 1820, adopted the holiday as well.

Marathon Monday and modern traditions

For most Americans the holiday is best known as the day of the Boston Marathon. The Boston Athletic Association staged its first marathon on Patriots' Day in 1897, making it the world's oldest annual marathon, and the race has been tied to the holiday ever since, drawing about 30,000 runners and hundreds of thousands of spectators along the route from Hopkinton to Boylston Street. The Boston Red Sox traditionally play a morning home game at Fenway Park that lets fans spill out as runners pass nearby. In Lexington and Concord, costumed reenactors restage the battles at dawn, and riders retrace Revere's and Dawes's routes. Municipal offices, libraries and schools in both states close, while most private businesses stay open and treat the day as a busy civic festival.

Observance outside Massachusetts and Maine

• Massachusetts: full legal holiday; state and municipal offices and schools closed.
• Maine: full state holiday, spelled Patriot's Day.
• Elsewhere: a handful of states mark the date in statute as an observance, with no closures.