# Why Is Christmas A Federal Holiday In The United States? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 25, 2021, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630 "2021-12-25T17:23:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2021, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/82 "2021-12-26T20:27:57Z")
… and apparently you _completely_ missed where I stated: > [@Broomstick](#): > > (obviously, there are Jews such as myself who are not such sticklers). That does not eliminate other Jews feeling differently. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2021, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/83 "2021-12-26T20:47:54Z")
No qualifier has ever been noticed in the history of the Dope. There must be a pile of missing pixels the size of the Pacific garbage patch somewhere in another dimension. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2021, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/84 "2021-12-26T20:47:58Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > lots of people don’t want to work on New Year’s Eve day yet that’s not a federal holiday. OTOH, New Year’s _Day_ **is** a federal holiday and Christmas _Eve_ is not. Which pairs well with Christmas Day because for many it involves a big celebration on the night before the date. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2021, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/85 "2021-12-26T20:55:28Z")
Yes, and note we also have Thanksgiving as a Federal Holiday, which also has religious roots. > [@beowulff](#): > > He poo-poo’d me and said that lots of non-Jews go out to the movies on Christmas Eve. I raised my eyebrows, and said “sure.” We used to go see a film on Christmas Day. Note that Good Friday is a big deal , Christian religion-wise but it is not a Federal Holiday. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > There are no Easter holidays in the US? In Canada Good Friday is a statutory holiday, as is Christmas and boxing day. Not at a Federal Level, but iirc some states do have it as a Holiday. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Christmas is a federal holiday both for the pragmatic reason that the majority of people wouldn’t work in the first place and for the cultural reasons that put “In God We Trust” onto coins, start Congress with a ceremonial prayer,… Which prayer has been done by a Rabbi several times. > [@Horatio\_Hellpop](#): > > For comparison’s sake, what are the federal holidays in Israel? I > **[Public Holidays in Israel in 2021 | Office Holidays](https://www.officeholidays.com/countries/israel/2021)** > > Comprehensive list of Public Public Holidays that are celebrated in Israel during 2021 with dates and information on the origin and meaning of holidays. Religion-wise Christmas is third or fourth anyway, with Easter, Good Friday, Lent, Advent, Palm Sunday, Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Ascension Thursday, Annunciation, Pentecost, and Reformation Day all having more or less importance faith-wise. Christmas is not really a big religious holiday, it wasn’t even celebrated until Charlemagne made it a bid deal- so he could have a big holiday to celebrate the day he was crowned. This kinda proves the Christmas in the USA is more secular- Israel has 9 or 10 religious Jewish holidays. If American wanted to have Christian holidays, there are about that many to pick from, but Christmas was picked as it is secular and more importantly SHOPPING! > [@dolphinboy](#): > > The other 10 federal holidays celebrate something secular, like Memorial Day and the 4th of July. Thanksgiving has as much (non-denominational) Christian roots as Christmas. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2021, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/86 "2021-12-26T21:02:32Z")
Note that quite a few localities in the USA have schools that close for Jewish holidays. > **[U.S. Counties Where Schools Close for Jewish Holidays](https://brilliantmaps.com/u-s-counties-where-schools-close-for-jewish-holidays/)** > > Map by reddit user jonross14 The map above shows where schools close for Jewish Holidays. Reddit user jonross14 explains more about how he created the map: My wife and I created this map. A colored county means that at least one school countywide... ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2021, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/87 "2021-12-26T21:33:03Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > but lots of people don’t want to work on New Year’s Eve day yet that’s not a federal holiday. Don’t like 95% of the New Year’s Eve festivities take place in the evening/night? New Year’s Eve day isn’t really a thing. More likely, people would want off Jan 2nd if they had the chance. ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2021, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/88 "2021-12-26T21:36:37Z")
If Christmas is truly a secular holiday and 100% about shopping they should change the name to Santamas and completely eliminate Christ from it. I’m sure that would be fine with conservative Christian communities. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2021, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/89 "2021-12-26T22:10:22Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Which prayer has been done by a Rabbi several times. Yeah, after many, many decades the Christians fought back on the elimination of the prayer by allowing other religious leaders to offer them. Were any of those religions fighting to mandate prayers or just angry they didn’t get a turn? That they still happen is a tribute to the power of Jesusism, not a sign of religious equality. How many minority religions have ever been invited? The House, BTW, has had [61 chaplins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaplain_of_the_United_States_House_of_Representatives), all of them Christians. (Don’t try to argue that Unitarian isn’t Christian.) The Senate has had [62, ditto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaplain_of_the_United_States_Senate). Religious theocracy. ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2021, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/90 "2021-12-26T23:03:29Z")
Cashmas. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2021, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/91 "2021-12-26T23:34:07Z")
Shopping ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2021, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/92 "2021-12-27T00:28:49Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > Either the US is a secular nation or it’s a Christian nation. It can’t be both I think it is both. It is a secular nation in the sense that the government does not have an official religion, and it is a Christian nation in the sense that a pretty substantial majority of its citizens are Christian to some extent. And the confluence of those two is that the not-religious federal government takes a religious holiday off because enough of their workers and constituents want to. Christmas is the only federal holiday that is religious, but it’s _far_ from the only religious holiday that aspects of the government recognize as existing in the real world. Government schools generally take Holy Week off too. But they sometimes call it “Spring Break”, so maybe it’s fine and not religious, even though it’s very definitely religious. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2021, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/93 "2021-12-27T03:42:47Z")
The 1870 law that established Christmas as a federal holiday also added New Years Day, the 4th of July, and Thanksgiving as holidays. At the time there wasn’t any real argument over whether or not it was appropriate for the government to officially recognize a “religious” holiday, probably because the government wasn’t forcing anyone to do anything religious. If you didn’t celebrate Christmas, you got a day off. That’s it. No biggie. The government wasn’t supporting Christmas, it was just saying that the office doors were closed that day, kinda like how a lot of businesses and schools are closed around here (southern PA) on the first day of hunting season. They aren’t closed to specifically support hunting, they just recognize that most folks aren’t going to be working that day anyway so might as well make it an official day off. Many states already had Christmas holidays (though many did not), so giving folks the day off was already standard in a lot of places. It’s also important to note that initially it wasn’t a paid holiday. Government workers were forced to take an unpaid day off up until 1938. Then it became a paid day off. ---
**Author:** ![Mallard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Mallard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mallard)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2021, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/94 "2021-12-27T04:06:38Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > There are no Easter holidays in the US? In Canada Good Friday is a statutory holiday, as is Christmas and boxing day. In Canada, Christmas is only a holiday federally to federally regulated workers (bank employees, interprovincial transport employees, telecommunication employees, etc) however it is not a holiday for provincially regulated employees, (store workers, restaurant workers, hospital workers and just about everyone else). They have to rely on provincial Employment Standards having proclaimed it a holiday although they all do. Boxing Day is a holiday under the Canada labour code but only to the aforementioned federal employees. Most provincial jurisdictions don’t have Boxing Day by statute but many such employers have agreed to it in union collective bargaining agreements. ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2021, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/95 "2021-12-27T04:29:27Z")
People keep saying that Christmas is a secular holiday and is all about gift-giving and related shopping. I didn’t think there were that many shopping malls in 1870, and Amazon was still working out the kinks in their pony express two-day home delivery service around that time. Perhaps in 1870 Christians, who were in the majority, felt they deserved a day off to celebrate the birth of their Lord, or maybe it was a convenient day for a federal holiday because people were spending most of their day in Church and not working, as opposed to watching the Packers host the Browns and stuffing themselves as they do today. Closing all of the Government offices probably wasn’t that big a deal unless you happened to live in a major city. What matters is that December 25th is known around the world as Christmas, the birthday of Jesus (even though it was just a reappropriation of the pagan holiday Saturnalia and Jesus was probably born sometime in the Spring). Since the US was a Christian majority country it made perfect sense to take off Jesus’ birthday. Nobody is arguing that. The US was a Christian country before 1870 and continues to be one today. I don’t care that the US isn’t secular, just stop saying that it is. “InGod We Trust” was first added to our money in 1864, the words “Under God” were added to the pledge of allegiance in 1954. I’m okay with all that, let’s just not be hypocrites about it. The definition of secular is “Denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis.” The US is far from secular. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2021, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/96 "2021-12-27T04:40:24Z")
> [@Mallard](#): > > Boxing Day is a holiday under the Canada labour code but only to the aforementioned federal employees. Most provincial jurisdictions don’t have Boxing Day by statute but many such employers have agreed to it in union collective bargaining agreements. Yes, the federal Boxing Day holiday only applies to about 10% of the national workforce. Ontario does have it, though, so that’s a big chunk of the work force that does get Boxing Day as a stat holiday. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2021, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/97 "2021-12-27T05:10:34Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > If Christmas is truly a secular holiday and 100% about shopping… It is not, and no one has claimed it is. Just mostly. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2021, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/98 "2021-12-27T06:21:39Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > Either the US is a secular nation or it’s a Christian nation. It can’t be both > [@dolphinboy](#): > > People keep saying that Christmas is a secular holiday > … > What matters is that December 25th is known around the world as Christmas, the birthday of Jesus Can’t it be both, [like the late Earl Warren](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUw9Eo9QqmM)? ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUBv.2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanubv.2/32/3260_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUBv.2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUBv.2)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2021, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/99 "2021-12-27T15:16:51Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > The US doesn’t have anything called “bank holidays.” Banks close on Federal and State holidays, but so do a lot of other places; and the term’s not in any sort of common use. “Bank Holiday” may not be a legal designation in the U.S., but I and everyone I’ve known uses the term. Most often heard around my office the week of Good Friday when people new to the company find out the stock market is closed and they invariably ask “is it a bank holiday?”. Why are the markets closed on Good Friday, anyway (not that I’m complaining)? I understand that religion wise it’s an important day, but would people normally take it off to observe? And anyway. I thought the Jews have all the money(except this one) 🤔 😀 ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2021, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/100 "2021-12-27T15:43:09Z")
> [@WOOKINPANUBv.2](#): > > “Bank Holiday” may not be a legal designation in the U.S., but I and everyone I’ve known uses the term. Interesting. Where are you? I’ve never heard it. I’ve heard people say ‘the banks are closed for ’, but that’s not the same phrasing. I’ve been a bit puzzled by the phrase ‘bank holiday’ in books written in/about the UK, because it read to me as if only the banks were closed and everything else was open. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2021, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630/101 "2021-12-27T15:45:06Z")
They’re mostly referred to in the US as three day weekends. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-christmas-a-federal-holiday-in-the-united-states/956630.md?page=6)