Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic How long is your Christmas vacation?

Recently, I read an observation that Americans tend to take off the 25th, maybe a day before or after, and then it's right back to work. That tracks with my experience. But then he says it's different in the UK.

This was from a column in the Irish Times about two years ago:

And I can't help wonder -- how much of that is true, and how much is, well, blarney?

So my question is, I guess -- how long of a holiday do people in your area generally get?

In my experience, grade-school kids get a little over a week (Dec 22nd to Jan 1st, this year) and when I was in college we had a month between semesters. But most businesses I know of are open the week between Christmas and New Year's. This year, we put our kids into all-day childcare at the YMCA so Mom & Dad could work. So did a lot of other parents, judging from the existence of the program! If you've got a week or two of vacation time you can take that week off, but it's generally not automatic.

What's it like in your neck of the woods?

PJ

Teachers and schoolkids get about two and a half weeks off, from circa December 21 or 22 to January 6. But the only "holy days" (or, as we call them in Swedish, "red days" because they are marked in red in the almanac), when most people can absolutely demand a day off, would be December 25 and 26 and January 1 and 6. Of course, almost everyone would be free on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve as well.

Ann

*boggle* Where in the world did they get THAT information?

Granted, I haven't worked in too many places. The McJob closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas days. My other two part time jobs were either school related, or I wasn't around because of school (went home for the holiday). My current job will close Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. If one or both of the days fall on the weekend, they pick another day to have off. If it's Sat/Sun, Christmas Eve is observed on Friday, and Christmas Day is observed on Monday. This year, Christmas Eve was observed on Monday and Christmas Day on Tuesday.

At least for the rest of the company. Alas, Technical Support is open 24/7/365. It used to tick me off when they'd send out emails to customers, "Our offices are closed for the holidays so that our employees can spend it with their families. However, Technical Support will continue to be open." As if we didn't have families. I think enough people griped, because it's no longer worded like that.

I work in education in London - I started my holiday at lunch time on Wednesday 20th, go back to work on Monday 8th January. Theoretically I could have worked the rest of the week of the 20th (the building is closed over the following two weeks), in practice I used some of my leave time. The public holidays here are 25th-6th December (with the following days off if they fall on the weekend) and January 1st, or the monday if it's a weekend day.

Here in Germany, Dec 25th and 26th as well as Jan 1st and 6th are holidays. Schools and universities usually close for about two weeks, and apart from people working in stores or hospitals or gastronomy (or something else that can't close), nearly everyone takes the week between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve off.

My school district is in Southern California, and we have a large Hispanic population. Many families in our district go to Mexico for the holiday season so attendance has been rather poor in early January when we were on the traditional schedule that gave us a 2 week break. So now we are on a modified traditional schedule...we start the school week before Labor Day so that we can get three weeks off for Winter Break. Our last day of school was Decmeber 22 and we return on January 16.

Here in Greece, there are three big holidays during this time of the year: 25 December (Christmas), 1 January (New Year's Day) and 6 January (Epiphany). There's definitely no working on these days.

Schools get a two weeks break: last day of classes is the 23rd (though sometimes they just take the kids to church, do only a couple of hours or have a small celebration, because kids aren't interested in having class that day anyway) and they get back on 8 January. Same holds true for foreign language institutes and all the education-related institutes in general, with the exception of tuition centres - where you go to have additional classes when you're having problems at school. The purpose of those are to keep you ahead of school, so they start on the 3rd - but still don't work on the 6th.

I don't know about the days off in sectors other than education - I'm a student, my brothers are students, and my father is a teacher *g* One thing I know and might interest you, though, is that on the Sundays before Christmas and New Year's Day the shops are open (Sunday is the day off for shops over here).

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

I can't use any of my holiday days during this time of the year b/c our 'year end' is buzy and we worked hard this year until 4 on Dec 28th.

I got a half day on the Friday and had the Monday and Tuesday off.

For New Years I get Monday off.

While I was in school (Univeristy not included) my last day was the Friday before Christmas (it depended on the week) and didn't have to be back either on January 2nd or the following Monday. Sometimes we had longer Christmas holidays or summer holidays.

I'm a stay-at-home mom who teaches home-school. I don't get holidays. Not ever. (Although we do have a school calendar to make sure I get enough hours in during my school year, so we get time off between Christmas and New Year's. We head back to school on Tuesday, but that's because James and I decided--not because anyone told us when to go.)

But I had one question. What's January 6? Epiphany day? What's that?

Elisabeth

You’d think folks could at least go without Technical support on Christmas.

So guys, what is Dec 26?

In Canada - Public Holidays for Christmas and New Years are:

- December 25th and December 26th (Boxing Day is observed here)

- January 1st

Those are the days that your employer either needs to give you as a vacation - or you get compensated if you absolutely have to work then (paid double time or another day off some other time).

They're not obligated to give you anything other than that and, from experience, most don't.

This:
This is most definitely true, here.

In Quebec, there are only 2 holidays where your employer will be obligated to give you a day off on another day of the week if said holiday falls on a Saturday or a Sunday and neither of those are Christmas or New Year's Day. (They are St-Jean-Baptiste, on June 24th and Canada Day, on July 1st)

I dunno anything about schools, though... I haven't set foot in one for quite a long time.

Boxing Day - lots of different theories about the origin of this holiday, the one I like best is that it was originally the holiday for servants (who would have of course been working hard on Christmas day) and the day for giving gifts to tradesmen and others who delivered stuff to your house, garbage collectors, postmen, etc. Most public services shut down without servants, so it was a public holiday. These days nobody has servants but the holiday remains.

I think Epiphany is about celebrating the day when the three Magi came to Bethlehem and found Jesus there. Basically, December 25 is about celebrating the birth of Jesus according to the Gospel of Luke, and Epiphany on January 6 would be about celebrating the arrival of the Magi according to the Gospel of Matthew. Or so I think. Correct me if I'm wrong.

As for why we celebrate Boxing Day in Sweden (and in several other parts of Europe), I don't think there is an obvious religious reason for it. However, the Vikings celebrated their winter holiday, the yule, before they were Christianized. So here in Scandinavia, the midwinter festivities are older than the celebration of the birth of Christ. The yuletide holidays lasted longer than just one day, and it could be that the Vikings couldn't accept the idea that they would have to exchange their long heathen holiday for a single day of Christmas. Maybe people simply demanded the right to keep on celebrating for at least one day more? Maybe that's one reason why we observe Boxing Day in Sweden, and in other parts of Europe as well?

Ann

Also, in Germany the 24th and the 31st are together on holiay, the second half of each day is holiday. So you if you want to not work on them, you have to take one day off, half a day for each holiday.

That we have the 24th as half a holiday may be due to the fact, that it is Christmas Eve when the German version of Santa Claus comes and brings the presents (and when I say coming you can take that literally, the Weihnachtsmann indeed comes to each house (loudly knocking on the door) and the children have to tell him that the have been good and will be good, than the have to sing or do something else and than they get their presents).

We actually have two days of Christmas. We even call it that. I believe we are the only country that does so. Either way, we have those two days off, as well as New Year's Day. Anyone that still goes to school (university included) gets two weeks off. Many others take the week between Christmas and New Year.

I work for the post, and we work 24/7. The holidays are observed, so no work at all on Christmas Day. In the evening of the 26th, work resumes. People do expect to get their mail delivered the next day again. :p Luckily, I work in the office, so I get both days off.

But there's a rule with us. During the entire month December we cannot take any days off, except for special reasons. There's such a rush and huge work load that we have to keep on working. So with us, many people take the first week of January off.

Saskia

As far as I'm aware, here in Scotland we follow Marcus's holidays. With the exception that we Scots get an extra day - January 2nd - because New Year (Hogmanay) is a much stronger tradition up here than in the rest of the UK. (I think the rest of the UK gets a public holiday day at another time of year instead of the 2nd, but not entirely sure about that).

I've never heard of the 3rd being a public holiday, let alone the 4th! Certainly never got them off when I was working.

LabRat

I work in the hotel industry here in Canada and in our ski-resort town, it's the busiest time of the year. That being said, all employees of the hotel get Christmas day off (the front desk staff rotate through two hour shifts to cover the phones,etc) and I got regular pay for the day despite the fact I didn't work it or the day after because I lucked out and had extra staff come in to cover for me. Normally unless you work in one of the service industries or retail, Christmas Day and Boxing Day (the 26th) are holidays so many people enjoyed a four-day weekend. Public school kids in BC get two weeks off over the holidays and I've managed to work my schedule so I'm only working six days of those two weeks, which has been a very nice break in the middle of all the chaos lately. I also will point out that some sectors take "down time" over the holidays...my brother works in management for the oil+gas industry in Alberta and his office has been closed since Dec 18th and won't reopen till the second of January to give staff a chance to rest or take vacations. However the longest holiday I've heard of yet belongs to a nursing student friend who informed me the other day she's getting a month off!

You're from the South, don't cha?

But, well, yeah, that's what I can secound.

But apart from that I know a lot of people who don't have off during XMas and New Year although they don't work at an absolutely-necessary-during-the-holidays company.

I spent 24th at home as well as the free days but during the other days I'd been working, so did a lot of my colleagues and my parents.
I wouldn't have had to since my working hours mostly depend on kindergarten's hours or people willing to send their children to us but that's why actually working at that time of the year is really relaxing

Jana

Yep, you nailed it! We also call Epiphany the Feast of the Three Kings, and there's a few other similar names that float around. It's also a tradition of many Catholics to leave up our Christmas decorations until the day of the feast since Epiphany marks the official end of the season for us on the church calendar.

JD

All of the businesses that I have worked for now give us either the Friday before the holiday or Monday after if it falls on a weekend. I however, have been lucky enough to have 2 weeks of vacation because my company gives me vacation days to take anytime I would like. I always take them around Christmas.

In college, we had a short winter semester that only lasted a month. I never went to this semester (many students didn't) and so I would have all of Jan and half of December off. However, those who went to this optional semester would leave school around December 16th and come back around January 3rd.

I would say though that I think Americans get the shaft on holidays. I only get 6 official holidays a year? Christmas, New Years, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Easter, and the 4th of July.