I found the liturgical Catholic calendar, but only in Spanish:
This appendix contains all the commemorations of saints, blessed persons, biblical celebrations, and apparitions of Mary, all of which are recognised by the Catholic Church, which has assigned a specific day of worship or observance for Catholics worldwide, except in cases where the worship is local or has fallen into disuse.
There is no day without several commemorations, and links to the event or person commemorated. Some are quite curious, that is a deep rabbit hole.
It varies widely obviously. Sometimes it’s all paid. Often in my experience is to get at least xmas and NY Day paid plus one more day next to each one so at least four days are company holidays and the rest is vacation days or unpaid.
Boxing Day is an English tradition that goes back to “time immemorial”. I may be named after the old tradition of giving employees and tradesmen a Christmas Box (ie, a bonus or gratuity), although why it should be on the day after Christmas may well relate to a Roman tradition of collecting alms for the poor on St Stephen’s day.
Easter Monday, Whit Monday, First Monday in August, and Boxing Day were created as “Bank Holidays” (literally - days on which banks were not open for business) in England, Wales and Ireland by the Bank Holiday Act in 1871, introduced by Sir John Lubbock Act. Christmas Day and Good Friday were already holidays under previous legislation.
Yes - within the 10 day bracket there will be 3 public holidays and perhaps 1-2 state or industry paid days off, but the rest has to come from your own paid leave. In Australia this is 4 weeks minimum of paid annual leave, but you can put flex-days, time-in-lieu or other leave towards the total.
My Father served with the USAAF in Australia. While airfield housing was being built, airmen lived with Australian families, Father with the Grevilles. Mrs. Greville sent my Grandmother Christmas cards that had Spring scenes on them.
I knew about it from the episode of MASH where they met soldiers from the British Army. They explained that the officers and enlisted switched roles for the day so the enlisted got the day off and officers did things like work in the mess hall. Obviously it didn’t extent to the battlefield. My recollection is that they said that it came from the tradition that the gentry would do the same thing with the staff so the Lord and Lady would cook and keep the fire going and tidy up. The servants would get small presents in boxes and hence the name. I am not vouching for the tv show being completely accurate nor my memory of an episode that I saw decades ago.
Its a recent thing in Australia and seems to start ramping up in early November, with an amorphous open-ended sale / bargain / bonanza / today only / buy-or-die hype that continues until almost Christmas eve. The ‘official’ dates are Friday 28 Nov into the following week, but the actual identity of these officials is unknown to me.
We’re getting off-topic a bit, but I guess its all part of the joyous pudding that results from warmed-up religious observance meeting Victorian benevolence and modern mercantile exploitation, leavened with some desire to manage peoples’ time off so that it doesn’t inconvenience business, ie. Boxing Day.
That’s not entirely a secular term. The “Twelve Days of Christmas” are the days from Christmas to the Feast of the Epiphany, and are one of the five official Seasons of the liturgical calendar (Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and Ordinary Time).
I’m picturing each day bigger than the one before until you have the drummers drumming as the lords leap on the dancing ladies with the grand finale yet to come.
When days like Christmas and Boxing Day (+ Easter, etc.) are public holidays, one could say it is due to tradition, but clearly it was not originally a secular tradition.
That’s definitely true, but there are many official public holidays on originally religious (Christian) feasts that have become very secular for most people, but are upheld for tradition.
My point is that “second day of Christmas” is not the name of 26 December in any Christian tradition I am aware of. Where that day has a dedicated name in liturgical calendars, it is St Stephen’s Day, because that’s the saint associated with it. Sure, Christmas is, of course, Christian in origin, but the Christian holiday of Christmas (“the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord”, in formal Vatican speak) is a one-day event (plus the vigil the night before, as for any other holiday). The idea of extending it to two days is a secular idea which you can find in German public holiday statutes but not in liturgical calendars.
But the idea of the “twelve days of Christmas” originated in Catholic doctrine. The Second Council of Tours in 567 decreed that every day between Christmas (December 25) and Epiphany (January 6) was a festival day. However, it does not specifically name them “the twelve days of Christmas”, if that is your point.
I can buy that, given that Christmas Day was already a holiday, somebody decided to make it a two-day holiday but that was a decision independent of any Catholic feasts that may or may not have been celebrated on the same day.
Do we know who first decreed the “Second Day of Christmas” a public holiday in Germany?
That’s a good question, but it cannot have happened before 1871, when Germany first was united. Formerly, probably every region, duchy, kingdom or city had their own regulations, probably also depending if the region was nominally Catholic or Protestant.
ETA: I did a quick search for “when was the second day of Christmas made a public holiday in Germany” (in German), but couldn’t find any definite cites.
