Good Friday and Easter Monday are federal stat holidays for the federal public service.
Most employers allow time off for religious holidays so if you had one you could ask.
Christmas is one of only two holidays the grocery workers union here have managed to convince the supermarkets to close so that no one has to work. The other one is. . . July 4 (surprise!)
Of course many businesses and institutions are 24/7 and someone has to work. When I was in broadcasting, I was that one person who worked at least a half-shift on every single holiday* for 4 1/2 years.
*I got New Year’s Day off the fourth year. It felt so wrong I went back to working holidays.
Well yeah, pretty much every culture has lots of holidays scattered throughout the year. And winter’s a pretty good time for one in an agricultural society, since you won’t be doing a bunch of work around then, and you probably won’t have eaten through your stores yet. Not everyone regards their own midwinter festival as the big important one that everyone cares about though
But Good Friday or Easter Monday could be days off, as in Australia so people could have a three or four day weekend. Other federal holidays, such as George Washington’s birthday and Memorial Day have been standardized as falling on a Monday. And though not an official holiday, many employers give their workers the day after Thanksgiving (Friday) off because they know people won’t be coming into work anyway.
In the US, Christmas is a secular holiday which just happens to share a name and date with a religious holiday celebrated by some Christians.
it never started as having to do with God. It was a saturnalia, sun didn’t die holiday and the church co-opted it. imho.
The real test of a holiday for New Yorkers is “Do I have to move my car”. And the holiday list is extremely inclusive, including not only Christian, Islamic and Jewish holidays, but also Diwali and Lunar New Year.
I believe you are mistaken here. AFAIK, Thanksgiving is a day to eat turkey and watch football.
I give up. I tried searching, but the only FTM I could find was gender related.
Yuletide is very much Germanic and not at all Celtic. [del]Deleted snarky comment about cultural appropriation.[/del]
For That Matter, I expect.
Christmas is a national holiday because everyone wants to take Christmas off. I don’t think it is an establishment of religion to give everybody the day off because some want to celebrate for religious reasons. If the government said you had to go to church on your day off, that would be an establishment.
[del]Merry Christmas[/del] Regards,
Shodan
It’s more a secular holiday than a religious one. For example, Rudolph, Santa, Frosty, etc are all more common than the baby Jesus, and creche scenes are limited by law and court decisions.
Listen to Christmas songs sometime: about 50% secular , 40% seasonal, and maybe 10% religious, mostly Little Drummer boy and Silent Night.
People of all religions celebrate Christmas.
Christmas has nothing whatsoever to do with saturnalia.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=886745
*Ok, around now we read or hear this meme - on FB, here maybe or anywhere around the internet or even radio or TV:
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“*Jesus wasnt born on Dec 25. The ancient Christians picked that day to compete with the ancient Roman Mitraic Holiday of Saturnalia, also celebrated on Dec 25. Saturnalia was a time of great merryment, with gift giving, parties and everything we associate with Christmas. Note the Similarity with the Solstice, “the celebration the Sun reborn” vs “the celebration the Son reborn”!”
It’s all wrong and all bullshit- except maybe the part about “Jesus wasnt born on Dec 25” because honestly we have no idea.
Saturnalia wasnt about Mitra, it was about (oddly, eh) Saturn. It wasnt celebrated on Dec 25, but the 17th (however, the Roman calendar being what it was, things moved about). Yes, as Wiki puts it: “The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn, in the Roman Forum, and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms: gambling was permitted, and masters provided table service for their slaves as it was seen as a time of liberty for both slaves and freedmen alike.[1] A common custom was the election of a “King of the Saturnalia”, who would give orders to people, which were to be followed and preside over the merrymaking. The gifts exchanged were usually gag gifts or small figurines made of wax or pottery known as sigillaria. The poet Catullus called it “the best of days”.[2]” Note the types of gifts. Saturnalia was more Mardi gras.
Then, if you were gonna compete with a Dec 17th holiday, you wouldnt pick Dec 25th. But altho the ancient Christian picked Dec 25th in the 3rd century , calling it “celebrating” would be a gross exaggeration. It was a “feast day” which all you catholic know, has nothing actually to do with feasting. The person (usually a saint) whose day it is remembered on their individual feast days with special mention, prayers, and possibly a scripture reading. Not until the time of Charlemagne , many hundreds of years later, (and after saturnalia hadnt been celebrated for over 500 years) was Christmas actually a time for merrymaking. So, the Christians didnt pick Dec 25th to "compete’ with saturnalia (which was dying out by that time anyway) as a riotous fun day of drinking, gambling and foolishness is not gonna be outdone by a day of quiet prayer and maybe lighting a candle. Easter was the big holiday, Christmas was pretty small potatoes.
As for that the celebration the Sun reborn" vs “the celebration the Son reborn”!", that pun only works in English, otherwise it’s sol and filius. The Roman version of the cult of Mitra came after Christianity, and it was a secret cult in any case (what we know about it for sure wouldnt fill a small pamphlet).And the Solstice is the 21st, not the 25th (to be sure, the Roman calendar was off by several days so stuff moved around).
Why did they pick the 25th? A very early Christian tradition said that the day when Mary was given the news she would bear the baby Jesus (called the Annunciation) was on March 25th - and it’s still celebrated today on same day. Nine months after the 25th March is the 25th of December. March 25th was also the day that Jesus died on when he was an adult. Numerology. It kinda makes sense. But it was backwards calculation, not “Hey, lets compete with saturnalia!”. Mind you, Dec 25th is likely wrong, but it’s as good as any other day, so why not?
So, dont believe the UL. Mind you, many Christmas traditions- holly, mistletoe, wreaths, the tree, yule logs and what not were folk (or even (shhh) pagan ) traditions we appropriated. So there is a little element of Yule in there. But no Saturnalia.
The post you quoted was replying to a post about Thanksgiving. Was SuntanLotion claiming that Thanksgiving started out as a saturnalia?
SuntanLotion is offline
Guest
Originally Posted by kanicbird
Just to add Thanksgiving has been established nationally to give thanks to our Heavenly Father. So Christmas is not the only national holiday directly that has to do with God.
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SuntanLotion "it never started as having to do with God. It was a saturnalia, sun didn’t die holiday and the church co-opted it. imho."
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I believe SuntanLotion is replying to the second sentence, not the first.
Many supermarkets are closed on Christmas, but by no means all.
Right. In my Christian tradition, Christmas is not a Christian Holiday. Easter is a Christian Holy Day. Where Massachusetts and I break with our puritan background is that we don’t mind having a secular holiday in the middle of (it’s summer here where I live).
AFAIK the USA has an above-average number of Christians who don’t really believe in the concept of a “Christian calendar” at all. Their ancestors were never able to squelch out Christmas and Easter completely, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.
It is celebrated, but since it falls on a Sunday, it’s not a day off.
As others point out, in the religion which considers Easter Sunday significant, it is already a day off because it is … Sunday! (You could argue that the Resurrection is celebrated 52 times a year!) Many businesses gave a half-day off on the Friday preceding Easter.
What holidays are celebrated by the most countries? New Years (also a stand-in for the winter solstice?) is #1, and Christmas #2, I think. If fixed solar-calendar dates are stipulated then Islamic (lunar-calendar) holidays and the Tet New Year are out, and the First of May (Labor Day) is surely #3.
But which date is #4 for most-countries holiday? I think the main possibilities are November 1, November 11, December 26, and December 31.
Cite? 