}

Monday, December 24, 2018

Christmas Eve 2018

Today is Christmas Eve! Which isn’t a holiday, though people’s heads are probably already there. Many Kiwis bodies are already, too. But it is just a Monday, technically speaking.

New Zealand’s Christmas public holidays are Christmas Day (December 25, of course) and Boxing Day (December 26), which is Tuesday and Wednesday this year. So today, Monday, is just a normal business day, even though it’s Christmas Eve.

Naturally, some businesses decided to close today in order to give their staff a give-day weekend. That doesn’t include retail stores, of course, though most of those close earlier than they normally would on a weekday.

The fact that there are two business days after Christmas—Thursday and Friday, the 27th and 28th—means that, if they can, people will take those days off to give themselves nine days off in a row. But then the following week, January 1 and 2 are public holidays, so why not take of December 31? And then January 3 and 4, which would give people 14 days off, four of them weekend days and four of them public holidays.

The reality is, of course, that not everyone can do that, and some will have really weird weeks this week and next week. There have been years I had weird work weeks like that. I’m really glad I don’t anymore. This could also mean the rest of us will have a weird couple weeks with some businesses closed, others open

No matter what people’s work schedules are over the next couple weeks, there are holidays in both of them, and that’s what we’ll all focus on. Because, that’s really the point of it all, after all.

No comments: