Happy Holidays

Yes, we need more public holidays. But is there anywhere else on earth where they celebrate the mere fact that the banks are on holiday? How pointless is that? And just why is either 26th December (though not in Scotland) or 2nd January (in Scotland but nowhere else) a public holiday at all? Not “How did it come about?”, but “Why is it the case now?”

Seventy-two per cent of Britons called themselves Christians at the last census, and no more than about one per cent is Eastern Orthodox. So the first source of holidays should be from the Western liturgical calendar as acceptable both to Protestant and to Catholic sentiment. Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension Day (forcing the Catholic Bishops’ Conference to restore it to its Biblical day as kept by the Holy Father) and the real Whit Monday (Whitsuntide, not Wilsontide) would do.

Then there are Saint George’s Day, Saint Andrew’s Day, Saint David’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Commonwealth Day, and the Queen’s Official Birthday (if only in celebration of the simple existence of so quintessentially British a thing), all of which should be public holidays throughout the United Kingdom.

Giving eleven, an odd number in more than one sense. It would seem a bit churlish to abolish Wilsontide while retaining Heathmas on 1st January, but that would nevertheless be the obvious way of giving an average of one per month, with twelve throughout the year. Still very modest compared to what even subsistence farmers and their labourers managed to survive throughout the thousand years before the Reformation.

And good luck to anyone still claiming to be a Tory while objecting to the keeping of Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Whit Monday, Saint George’s Day, Saint Andrew’s Day, Saint David’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Commonwealth Day, or the Queen’s Official Birthday. Or, indeed, Heathmas.