Sunday 11 May -
Mother’s Day (Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bonaire, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, Cambodia, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Congo, Dem. Rep., Congo, Rep., Cote d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Curaçao, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominica, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Faroe Islands, Fiji, Finland, Germany, Gabon, Gambia, Greenland, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guyana, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Macau, Malaysia, Malta, Myanmar, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Singapore, Sint Maarten, Slovakia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United States, Uruguay, Vietnam, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe)
Christmas Eve and Midsummer Eve are de facto Holidays. Most employment contracts provides for these days as full holidays.
Finland is an easy country to visit. When meeting, Finns shake hands and make eye contact.
Finns love reading things written about them abroad, and visitors should not feel uncomfortable being asked repeatedly what they think of Finland. It is a country where considerable weight is attached to the spoken word.
Tipping has never fitted very comfortably into the Finnish way of life. Taxi drivers do not expect to get a tip, but customers often pay the nearest rounded up figure to the actual fare.
A growing interest in cooking and wines has led to an increase in entertaining in the home. The home is to a great extent the focus of social life in Finland – to a greater extent at least than in countries where it is more common to meet over a meal in a restaurant. Finnish cuisine has western European, Scandinavian and Russian elements. Finns seldom make speeches during a meal, but they do so on formal occasions.