A typical revolutionary move would be to switch to ten- or eight-day weeks. Cf. the original French revolutionary calendar.
There are no Easter holidays in the US? In Canada Good Friday is a statutory holiday, as is Christmas and boxing day.
I think Christmas is a federal holiday for the same reason that in my public grade school, the Jewish holidays and Good Friday were school holidays; because a substantial percentage of the populace observe those holidays.
Of course it is; at least, originally (though, if looking back far enough for “originally”, many of them weren’t.)
However, they’re generally closed also on Saturdays, which pretty much blurs the religious issue and makes it more into the people-ought-to-get-days-off issue.
Easter falls on a Sunday, so it’s a holiday anyway. Good Friday is not a state or federal holiday; IME most Christians don’t take it for a day off but some do. Boxing Day isn’t really a thing here at all, though I expect some families have it as part of a family tradition.
That’s a fair point.
Yeah, my high school was a majority Jewish school when I attended. We always got Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah off. Most of my friends were not religiously observant at all, so it was usually a beach day – early Fall is always hot in SoCal.
Yeah, I’d expect most Americans if asked about “Boxing Day” would think it was a day you watched PPV boxing.
Googling, Good Friday is a state holiday in some (eleven or twelve) states.
Ah, I didn’t know that. Thanks for fighting my ignorance!
Yeah, exactly. This isn’t rocket science or an endorsement of religion. If a substantial portion of your workforce really doesn’t want to be there on Christmas (which is true for the vast majority of Christians and also for plenty of people who don’t consider themselves Christian in the US), then you’re sort of mostly shut down on that day anyway and you might as well take it off.
Boxing Day is only a stat holiday in Ontario.
Since everything else has been said, I’ll just add that the United States is a soft christian theocracy that many people want to turn into a hard christian theocracy. 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, used to have every local body do the same until lawsuits started to prevent it (Congress makes it own laws and has loudly refused to change), inserted “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance to show that we weren’t godless commies, are going through a “War on Christmas” and a battle to end abortion, and consider Jesus to be the default god, who wrote the New Testament in English.
The U.S. is very, very, very Christian country. It was not founded to be a Christian country, and care was taken to prevent the government and the church to be one body as in the Church of England. Realistically, though, nobody at the time could have imaged the U.S. as being anything other than a variety of flavors of Protestantism mixed with an occasional Catholic stronghold. Jesusism, to coin a term, continued through the 19th and 20th centuries, as the default national religion. It was considered such in virtually every government high and low, virtually every school system, and virtually every cultural and social system. At a few times and places, mostly New York City, a sufficient number of Jews coalesced to demand some recognition, but nationally anti-Semitism countered that except in platitudes like “the Judeo-Christian tradition” which is a wholly Christian notion.
It’s Jesus all the way down, which is why his “birthday” is a federal holiday and his “resurrection” would also be one if it weren’t always on a Sunday, and Sundays were and until very recently remained a holy day recognized in state laws that limited non-church activities.
Federal Holidays: Evolution and Current Practices
On June 28, 1870, the first federal holidays were established for federal employees in the District of Columbia.4 Apparently drafted in response to a memorial drafted by local “bankers and business men,” the June 28 act provided that New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Christmas Day, and “any day appointed or recommended by the President of the United States as a day of public fasting or thanksgiving [were] to be holidays within the District [of Columbia].”5 This legislation was drafted “to correspond with similar laws of States around the District,”6 and “in every State of the Union.”7
Congressional ResearchService - https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R41990
It’s a day off with (for them) no other obligations. So what is there to do, what’s open? Movies and Chinese restaurants. So yes, it’s become a tradition for many, but not due to religion or a religious celebration. It’s gone on long enough and has become widespread enough in the community that jokes are made about it.
I don’t know; how about an Indian restaurant? 
Yay! A new tradition starts!
. . . And that was contentious enough at the time.
Poke around (Google Maps) and you might find some surprising places open. In 2020, I was resigned either to ordering an expensive ($75+) pre-cooked meal from a white tablecloth place or something from a fast food chain. I was in one of my favorite Peruvian places aboaut a week before Christmas and was complaining about this and the manager told me, “Oh, we’re open Christmas”. So I had Lomo Saltado, Inka Cola, and Flan for Christmas.
While it’s not a public holiday in Thailand, one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, what with all the Christmas decorations in all the shopping malls. (Siam Paragon mall had an interesting take with a giant Christmas tree topped by a giant Visa card.)
Plus December is the most festive month in that country, with three public holidays – King’s birthday on December 5 (although since the old king died five years ago, it’s now Father’s Day), Constitution Day on December 10 and New Year’s Eve. Yes, both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are official public holidays in Thailand, and with New Year’s the big gift-giving season there, it meshes nicely with Christmas. And the last place I worked there, the Bangkok Post newspaper, always gives Christmas off if it occurs on a weekday (so staff there are out of luck this year and next).
I guess you’re too young to remember when most stores and services didn’t operate on Sundays, and banks closed at 3 p.m. every day. I remember when the first 7/11 convenience store opened in my town, and it was a very novel idea indeed, a store that opened two or three hours before most others, and closed five hours after everything else did.
I also remember that EVERYTHING closed on Christmas. Gas stations included.
Technically (legally), it’s actually not. If December 25 falls on a Saturday, the federal holiday is December 24; if December 25 falls on a Sunday, then the federal holiday is December 26.
South Korea has more than “very few” Christians.