Four day holiday

Today is Easter Sunday. Okay, well, that’s about all I can say about that.

The fact is, Easter is a day that has diminishing importance to New Zealanders—except as part of a long holiday weekend. This is New Zealand’s four-day weekend, similar to America’s Thanksgiving (except that many in America work on the day after Thanksgiving).

In New Zealand, both Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays. They’re really the last of the year, seasonally speaking, because we’re in autumn now, with the days becoming shorter and the nights cooler. We’re also entering a period with a dearth of pubic holidays.

The next holiday is ANZAC Day on April 25 (which I’ll talk about in more detail on the day), and then nothing until Queen’s Birthday on June 4. The dry spell between national public holidays after that is very long, ending with Labour Day on October 22—roughly four and a half months after Queen’s Birthday.

So, it’s easy to see why Kiwis value the four-day Easter weekend holiday so much, even if the religious significance has largely passed.

It’s been many, many years since I last cared about Easter’s religious overtones. I don’t even normally get into the whole chocolate eggs and bunnies thing (he says, ignoring that he bought his man some white chocolate Easter eggs…).

There’s a trading ban on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, meaning most shops (with some exceptions) must be closed. This, apparently, is hard for average Kiwis to deal with: Area shopping malls were packed yesterday as people picked up all the things they couldn’t get on Friday (including me: I forgot to pick up cat food on Thursday). This increased activity was definitely noticeable, despite the fact that many people leave town for the long weekend (motorists are being warned to allow a lot of time for heavy traffic when they come home tomorrow).

Tomorrow is a normal trading day, though a public holiday. Some shops will be closed, like on a Sunday, but others will be open (and probably packed). Many cafés and restaurants will add a “holiday surcharge” to bills because the government recently changed the rules to make sure that their staff receive fair pay when working a public holiday. I realise that many restaurants operate on very thin profit margins, but I think that some use the surcharge as a way to boost profits, ignoring that they also see a rise in business on public holidays which would more than cover the costs. Interestingly, not only does McDonald’s not charge a surcharge, they also advertise that fact.

And that’s a bit of a look at Easter in New Zealand. The weather has been brilliant, not too warm, but with lovely sunny, mostly clear skies. It’s been what’s called “fine weather”, which means weather that’s clear and without rain (though that certainly meets my definition of nice weather). Anyway, if the weather were like this year round, we’d have to fight off all the people wanting to settle here.

It’s been a busy few days: Relatives visiting, a big work project to complete, a new podcast to do—it all added up. But tomorrow’s the last day of the holiday weekend, after which it’s back to normal (so-called). In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy what’s left of this holiday.

Have some chocolate eggs for me, won’t you?