Maine is marking Patriot's Day on the third Monday in April, with state, county and municipal offices closed as the state celebrates the holiday for the 120th time. Federal offices and the Post Office remain open, and many banks, retail stores and restaurants are also keeping their doors open because the day is not a federal holiday.
The holiday commemorates the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775, two of the earliest battles in the American Revolutionary War and the clash remembered as the "shot heard round the world." Maine started celebrating Patriot's Day in 1907, 13 years after Massachusetts began its own observance, and the two states still use slightly different spellings of the name.
That difference has lasted despite at least one attempt to settle it. A Maine bill in 2014 that would have changed the location of the apostrophe failed to advance, leaving Maine with Patriot's Day and Massachusetts with Patriots' Day. This year is Maine's 120th celebration of the holiday, a state observance that keeps its Revolutionary War roots alive even as most federal workers and mail carriers go about a normal Monday.
So what is Patriots Day in Maine? It is a state holiday, not a federal one, tied to the start of the nation's war for independence and observed in a way that still reflects that split between local tradition and national routine.
