Bermuda was the real winner as the Cup Match weekend passed with incident.

The Cup Match holiday is perhaps the most popular break of the year, giving people a chance to relax with friends in the middle of summer and to mark two vital dates in the Island's history.

Emancipation Day and Somers Day deserve to be celebrated together under the umbrella of Cup Match because, in their own ways, they mark the beginnings of two vital chapters in the Island's history.

Somers Day may seem obvious as it celebrates the beginning of the settlement of the Island. But it is worth remembering that in 1609, setting off in a small sailing ship for Virginia was the equivalent of going off to settle Mars today.

The courage of the Sea Venture crew and passengers in first surviving a hurricane and then rebuilding their lives in Bermuda before sailing off again to rescue the Jamestown colony is a tale of courage which is hard to equal.

The subsequent settlement of Bermuda took vision and courage as well, and it is worth remembering that for almost all of its history, Bermuda and Bermudians have had to live by their wits and work together just to survive, let alone to prosper.

Emancipation Day is equally momentous. To be sure, without Sir George Somers, Bermuda as we know it would not exist. But without the end of slavery, Bermuda would have been a very different place.

Emancipation brought slaveholding with all its attendant horrors to an end , but it also marked the recognition that black and white Bermudians could have equal rights.

While the property qualification for voting is rightly seen as a bar to equal suffrage and racial equality, the fact that black Bermudians could qualify to vote was the first legal recognition that whites and blacks could be equal.

Then too, emancipation marked the true beginning of the march to equal suffrage and to the end of segregation, a struggle which has dominated the 20th Century and indeed, continues in various forms to this day.

Increasingly, Cup Match sees the many races who make up the Bermudian population come together as friends to enjoy each other's company. To be sure, there are still divisions and too often, Bermuda works together but plays separately.

But holidays like Cup Match show that those divisions can be bridged through tolerance, mutual respect and a celebration of all of Bermuda's traditions.