Now, before I actually explain what I'm talking about, let me make one thing clear. Grouch as I am, I am not complaining that there should be LESS public or 'religious' holidays. What I am saying is that they are woefully distributed and I propose we sort this out immediately.
And now in more detail. I neither demand nor expect sympathy for this, but having married a Ukrainian, there are more important days in the calendar than there would otherwise be - as well as all the UK holidays (religious or bank), there are few Ukrainian ones to add into the mix (Independence Day, International Women's Day (which is a public holiday there), Orthodox Christmas, Orthodox Easter when it's on a different date, etc etc). Obviously, rather than cherry-picking the best holidays and forgetting about the rest - imagine the family arguments as we try to decide which holidays we will ignore - all of them must be marked in some way.
Which isn't such a disaster, really it isn't. But I'm really not happy about the way the holidays are distributed across the year. In the last three months we've had a bit of a celebration overload. Try this for size:
25 December - UK Christmas
31 December - New Years Eve
6/7 January - Orthodox Christmas
13 January - 'Old' New Year
19 January - Orthodox Epiphany (seemed to be an excuse for buying more cake!)
2 February - 10 Years since Gap Year in Russia [THIS YEAR ONLY]
14 February - Valentine's Day
25 February - Wedding Anniversary
4 March - My birthday
8 March - International Women's Day
See my point? Of course I can't really ask for much sympathy for celebrating 10 years of Russia, and if celebration overload had been a consideration, technically we could have got married at a different time of year...but nonetheless, it's a bit much. At least, I think, International Women's Day was the last for a while - until Easter in a month's time...
Now, compare our schedule of celebrations for September to Mid-December:
Bank Holidays - NONE
Family celebrations (birthdays, anniversaries) - NONE
'Religious' celebrations - NONE
Most of you will have been subjected to me ranting about this already, and I imagine you feel the same anyway, but surely the most rubbish part of the year is that long stretch from September to Christmas, particularly late October to late November, when the days are getting shorter and darker, the weather is getting worse, Summer is a distant memory and it still seems like Christmas is ages away.
Why then can't we have at least one holiday in that horrible, barren wilderness? Why can't we copy the Americans and celebrate Thanksgiving? Why can't England declare independence from the UK in late November so that we can celebrate Independence Day?! Is that really too much to ask? If so, could we at least get a bank holiday in November or something? Please...
P.S. Actually, I'm sure if I researched this properly, I'd discover that some back-bench MP has tabled a motion to do just that, so if anybody can send me in the way of the right campaign, I'm ready to sign up.
P.P.S. Also, rejigging the public holiday situation IS on the agenda in Ukraine, where they inherited a lot of the Soviet ones and came up with some new ones (some to do with indepedence, some revived religious holidays), and thus have a surfeit of holidays, even without including the periods where everybody expects to do sweet f.a., such as the first week of January, the first week of May, and most of August...but imagine how popular you make yourself politically by proposing to axe lots of holidays!
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8 comments:
Oh my goodness. Only you, dear Mr Duncan, could spend so much time and clearly thoroughly narked energy complaining about having too many holidays!!!
Bless you. Katie. xx
Oh my goodness. Only you, dear Mr Duncan, could spend so much time and clearly thoroughly narked energy complaining about having too many holidays!!!
Bless you. Katie. xx
So good I said it twice. :-)
How about Interational Smuj Day on the nearest Monday to November 20th? Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Katie, if you read the first sentence you will see that I am not complaining about having too many holidays, only that they are poorly distributed and there are no holidays in the Autumn when we could all do with cheering up (and spending less time at work).
Smuj, I salute the idea of International Smuj Day. I propose to celebrate it with you at a boozer of your choosing. Though maybe we should keep it on a Saturday night for a little bit longer, just until more employers catch on?
Although not actually holidays, there are Hallowe'en and Guy Fawkes night to punctuate the dreary tedium of the autumn. Hallowe'en I guess is only fun if you're a kid or have kids who want to dress up, but surely Fireworks Night is entertainment for all the family, hey peeps? But yes, I agree that it's a depressing time of year and a bank holiday sometime around then would go down a treat. Unfortunately for those of us in England, it seems the only possibility of a new public holiday is St. George's Day in April, which would add to the glut of celebrations in the early part of the year. I suppose the only thing to do is save up some of one's annual leave for the last quarter and take oneself off somewhere nice.
You could always celebrate my birthday. It's uncomfortably close to International Smuj Day though, so perhaps we could ask the Smuj Celebration Committee to move their event to October, and between us we'd have fixed your autumnal holiday deficit entirely.
I did read the first sentence - but my opinion still stands!!
You are of course all very welcome to join us Scots in celebrating St Andrew's Day on 30th of November - we know that a good hard spell of drinking breaks up the dreary months nicely!!
Katie
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