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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Dita_e_Ver=c3=abs_=2814_March=29?=
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2025 12:30:48 +1300
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"an Albanian spring festival and pagan holiday....for the beginning of 
the spring-summer period."
Celebrated officially on 14 March in Albania, unofficially in other 
countries where there are Albanians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dita_e_Ver%C3%ABs

Alb dita 'day', e 'of', verë 'summer'.

But it's not summer yet, even in Albania!
Note the above slightly slidy wording.
Verë looks as if it might be from Latin vēr 'spring' (PIE *wes-).
Could have been a semantic shift, I guess.
Modern Alb has another word for 'spring' - sustë.

Further into this unfamiliar territory I will not venture.

Oh yes, it's also (according to my upstairs calendar):

Purim (a Jewish holiday that commemorates the saving of the Jewish 
people from annihilation at the hands of an official of the Achaemenid 
Empire named Haman, as it is recounted in the Book of Esther)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purim

Holi (Hindu festival of colours, love and spring -- it's the one where 
they throw coloured powders all over each other)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi

Neither of these seems to be a national holiday in any country, but they 
will be celebrated by Jews resp. Hindus in many parts of the world.

Interestingly, they are both precisely defined as extending from evening 
(on the 13th) to evening (14th).

/ObSci.lang  Etymological notes:

"Purim is the plural of the Hebrew word pur (loan from Akkadian puru) 
meaning "lot".Its use as the name of this festival comes from Esther 
3:6–7, describing the choice of date:

     6: [...] having been told who Mordecai's people were, Haman plotted 
to do away with all the Jews, Mordecai's people, throughout the kingdom 
of Ahasuerus.
     7: In the first month, that is, the month of Nisan, in the twelfth 
year of King Ahasuerus, pur—which means "the lot"—was cast before Haman 
concerning every day and every month, [until it fell on] the twelfth 
month, that is, the month of Adar.

[That is, an act of divination to determine an auspicious day on which 
to carry out his wicked plan.]


--------------

Holi is supposed to be from Holika, the name of an asuri in Hindu 
mythology, elsewhere called a "demon"...Oh, read the story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holika