Hanukkah Harry?
I feel the same as **Joeu **and **Telemark **here. No, nobody literally says “it should be your holiday, too,” but when I hear nothing but Christmas music at (to give two recent examples) the dentist’s and the gym, it’s like they’re saying “everyone loves this music, and you should, too.”
Even though it’s all secular music – no hymns, etc. – it still feels oppressive.
And just to get this off my chest – that John Lennon Christmas song is the shittiest thing he ever did.
Since some who don’t “celebrate” Christmas aren’t fond of everything being closed (me), maybe we should go to the places that are open and spend a lot to encourage others to open on chirstmas.
They’re saying the opposite. Everyone hates the music they play in the gym and the dentist’s office.
My guess is, Christmas is a holiday because it’s not always on a Sunday, whereas, say, Easter is not a holiday because it is, and back when decisions like this were made, all Sundays were pretty much de facto holidays.
Really? Someone tell the dental assistant who was humming along with “Jingle Bell Rock” while she was cleaning my teeth. #hellisreal
Well, it’s a major religious holiday for the religion that has by far the most adherents in the US, even if some of them are, like me (in the UK) culturally Christian rather than actually being strong believers.
Here in London some Muslims do celebrate Christmas Day to an extent. Present giving is the norm among the kids I taught, for example. Muslim kids joined in with the nativity at my daughter’s primary school (it would have impossible to stage one if they hadn’t), and their parents came to watch same as anyone else. Some people might have a tree or if not that then pretty lights. Jesus is a prophet in Islam so it’s not really that weird, and Christmas is relatively secular for the most part here.
1856 doesn’t strike me as relatively recent for a public holiday, because public holidays where the government mandates a day off work, rather than the church or common custom deeming it so for their adherents, are fairly recent. There weren’t any mandated public holidays (which we call bank holidays) in the UK until 1871. Good Friday and Christmas Day were already holidays by custom but the other holidays were religious (hence the name), and didn’t give workers any official right to time off work.
What’s the significance of November 1st? All Saints’ Day? I don’t think that’s ever moved beyond being a purely religious festival.
I’d definitely agree about May Day. Clicking randomly on the countries in this list: List of holidays by country - Wikipedia almost all of the big countries except Japan and Saudi Arabia have May 1st as a national holiday. It’s a holiday in all of Europe, all the former states of the Soviet Union and almost all of the former British, Spanish, French and Portuguese colonies (I’ve found one exception. Tuvalu, but I haven’t checked all the very small countries).
None of the other fixed dates seem to me to be common enough to merit being listed as fourth - December 26th is common in Europe but not so much elsewhere, and December 31st and 11th are not public holidays in almost every country on that list.
May 1 is not Labour Day nor a holiday in Canada and the US. Labour Day is the first Monday n September.
The true time-honored spirit of Anglo-American Christmas is a lady named Ethyl, you probably know her well.
Gppgle shows All Saints Day (November 1) as a public holiday this year in Spain, Italy, Chile, Belgium, Austria, Hungary — and those are just a few I checked. El Salvador and Brazil celebrate it November 2 (All Souls).
Tuvalu … and the United States
Ninja’ed by Northern Piper, but …
Nitpick: The U.S. doesn’t have a Labour Day at all.
Correct, May Day is not a holiday in the USA, well any more than say Arbor day.
However, Labor day is a holiday, Banks closed usually, and people given the day off. Unless you are being pedantic and rude by saying “Labour” isnt a correct spelling. But I am sure you’re not doing that, as that would be…
Then how do Americans know when to stop wearing white?!?
Uh, what?
Not really a counter-example - some of the strongest earworms are songs people hate.
Dude, no! That was the best Christmas song.
Ethyl with a y, that’s a hint, you can guess her last name, it starts with an A.
No, that was “Imagine”. The Christmas song is certainly a contender, I concede.
Six weeks of Marshmallow World and Walking in a Winter Wonderland will do that to you. I feel ya, brother…
Neither is Starbucks.
My hunch is that if a plurality of our country’s merchants made half of the money they made all year in April because of the Feast of St. Walpurgis, that would be a federal holiday, too. In this season of our Lord and Savior, the Benjamins matter too.