As the title says… are there are more countries with two days off per week then one day?
And if I may add, what about shops closing on Sundays?
South Korea has both 1 and 1/2 day weekends and 2 day weekends. Usually they alternate, but sometimes you get more 2 day weekends in a month than the other kind of weekends. And some industries have 2 day weekends only.
In Panama many people work 5 1/2 days (a half day on Saturday).
Israel has a two day weekend, but it runs Friday to Saturday.
This is currently a big issue in Germany. The German constitution contains a clause granting legal protection to Sundays and official holidays as days of rest. Based on this, German federal legislation (called Ladenschlussgesetz , Shop Closing Act) has for decades prohibited opening stores on Sundays, excluding gas stations, shops in train stations and airports selling goods to travellers, and also excluding shops in touristically important areas. Besides, there are exception clauses for certain times of the year, for example the Sundays before Christmas.
Many city administrations are under pressure from large stores that wish to open on Sundays, so those exceptions are interpreted quite widely nowadays. There’s now considerable political support for dropping the Sunday closure rules altogether. There arer strange coalitions coming up here, because the lobbies opposing this liberalization include left-wing unions (worried that the working hours of their members are increased) and conservatives and the churches (worried about the profanization of the holy day).
Personally, I’m in favor of allowing shops to open on Sundays - after all, it’s hardly of the government’s business to decide when a shopkeeper wants to open his business. I also expect the prohibition to be lifted in the next few years.
I don’t know whether this is still the case, but in Japan Saturday used to be a ‘trading day’ for the Financial Markets
The Indian government is off on the 2nd and 4th Saturday of every month, and all Sundays. Corporates are free to choose their weekend structures. Most have a 5.5 day week. Few, if any, have a 6 day week. There are no restrictions on stores, supermarkets, malls, etc. Most are open all day everyday, while some choose to down shutters on Sunday afternoons.
I’m living in the UAE now. This country used to have a Thursday-Friday weekend, until this past weekend when they switched over to a Friday-Saturday format. Companies here have a 5 or 5.5 day work week. There are no restrictions on stores here either, though the summer months see most storeowners downing shutters in the afternoons.
The situation in the Netherlands is exactly the same as Schnitte describes in Germany.
The Netherlands have a 2 day weekend, with stores closed on Sunday and Monday(morning). However, working four days a week becomes increasingly normal, so many people have friday off as well.
On a side note, I have always thought Sunday shopping in the USA odd.
In the Netherlands the Christian Party believes it is a fundamental fight, one that identifies them as Christians, to ensure Sunday Shopping doesn’t catch on.
The Christian parties want to keep it that way, on the grounds, quite rightly in their line of reasoning, that no less then four of the Ten Commandments order us to “Honour The Sabbath.” and not have you or your “servants” work that day.
This in sharp contrast with the USA, where Sunday is THE day for shopping. Personally, I think the explanation for this is that Sunday shopping is vital to the USA economic system; when you have people working at all hours, they have to be able to shop at all hours (or the other way around, I’m not sure ).
But still, it has always struck me as odd that Christian fundies in the USA don’t even think twice about breaking four of the ten Commandments every Sunday, but go berserk when it comes to inconclusively condemned things like homosexuality.
Sort of. Friday is a “half-day” - most businesses are closed, shops and government offices are open till 2 PM or so, and it’s a school day.
Most stores are closed from Friday afternoon until Saturday evening (if not Sunday). Restaurants and such (the “entertainment sector”) are open in most of the country. Just like in the European cases mentioned above, who or what gets to stay open on Saturday is a major religious/secular flashpoint.
Reading the replies here really makes me question whether the U.S. has a two day weekend, something else, or not one at all. Many people get two days off a some point but there really isn’t that much difference between a Friday and Saturday at least around here. Almost everything is open. Sunday has more closings but most of the big, important stuff to consumers is important as well.
What makes you think they’re not around? They’re just not as vocal a minority as, say, the creation-first group.
This British woman who had lived in Shanghai told me that hey really had no concept of a weekend and worked everyday, but maybe she just meant the poor.
You mean everything which sells to private individuals is open. But the vast majority of people don’t work at the shops with a cash register and an “open” sign on the door.
The multi-story office buildings are not “open”. In most American cities, the downtown area is totally dead on Sat and Sunday, but it sure gets busy Monday morning.
When I was in Italy, they had off Saturday and Sunday, but took a very, very lazy Monday. Like work a couple hours in the morning, take a 3 hour lunch, and then work a few in the evening. I think we should import this 
So school there is Monday through Friday?
Are schools ever open on Sunday? Colleges?
Around noon on Sundays we’ve always gotten a rush of well-dressed people. Sunday morning, dead, but as soon as the clock struck 12 the churches started letting out and almost packs of customers would invade the store. The “Jesus ladies” were especially funny as they’d always try to pass out pamphlets and go on and on about how “we should all follow the Bible”. Yet
I’m rather curious about how any commandment except 4 can be interpreted as banning shops on Sundays. Also, I thought the sabbath was on Saturdays.
There are at least two different versions of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, just like there are two (conflicting) versions of the story of Adam and Eve.
This is the version of the Ten Commandments from Exodus 20
And as for the age-old question on which, exactly, should be the Sabath(Sunday, Saturday or Friday)… well, I don’t see any Christians advocating a shopping ban on Saturday or Friday either.
As Masstricht points out, the Ten Commandment passage in the Bible is not divided into several Commandments, but one continous text, which is why there are different versions of splitting it up into single rules (I believe Jewish tradition has the “not carve idols” sentence as a separate Commandment, while Christians usually add it to the “no other god beside me” thing). But I guess all the common versions agree that the bold passages in Masstricht’s post form one Commandment, not four of them.