I hate Christmas. Every December we are assailed with an increasing barrage of dreary hymns, religious and/or pagan legends and fairy tales and exhortations to overspend on extravagant gifts. This all leads up to firstly a total and then a partial national shutdown which lasts from Christmas Day until two or three days after the New Year. During this period people are expected to eat and drink themselves silly, listen to the King's message and watch old films and sitcoms on the television while trying not to fall out with the relatives who have billeted themselves on them for the duration.
Why do we put up with it? and what can be done about it?
Whenever I hear on the radio the solo boy soprano’s rendering of “Once in Royal David’s City” it brings back to me the nonsense, tedium and hypocrisy of my school’s Carol Services in Portsmouth Cathedral in the 1950s. Every year we were brainwashed with the absurd story of the unmarried mother giving birth in a stable, the three oriental wise men bringing unsuitable gifts and the shepherds washing their socks in the middle of the night (sorry, they were watching their flocks). In the middle of this we also had to endure an excruciating sermon from Holy Joe (Canon TC Heritage), whose day job was as a housemaster and an equally boring English teacher. I expect most people can recount similar formative experiences.
It might be argued that this carol service ritual, although a waste of time, is fairly harmless and that most people survive it. Perhaps it is just one of the many stupid things that you have to put up with at school (or had to in my day). However, it does have a more serious side. It is an extension of the continuing legal requirement (in England and Wales at least) that all pupils in state schools must participate in a daily act of religious worship (unless parents opt out) and that this must be “broadly Christian” unless decided otherwise by a local committee. It is obviously inappropriate in a country where only 46% of the population say they are Christian (see this link) and only 4.7% actually attended church regularly in England (see also this link).
Leaving aside the religious hypocrisy, Christmas is an annual period when you send and receive greetings cards (and more recently greetings emails) to and from distant relatives you scarcely know, former colleagues you have lost touch with and neighbours whom you see or speak to every day. It is a bit awkward to be the first to remove a regular card-sender from your Christmas card list, as this might cause offence, so the practice tends to be self-perpetuating. However, I suppose the custom of sending cards has the possible merit that it is a way of letting people know that you are still alive – and indeed a way of learning that your old boss has “passed on”.
Christmas also has economic consequences. Clearly there is a loss of production during the total and partial lockdown. Some of this loss may simply be displacement of production from other times of year (since employees would have taken holiday at those other times anyway) but it is more than that. During the partial shutdown period, even for employers that are working, it is often more difficult to get things done or to work efficiently since many other organisations do close down or run a skeleton service, with the result that, for example, you can’t get spare parts, or legal advice, or urgent repairs done, or anything delivered – and this prevents or delays other important work.
Bank holidays
Christmas is actually a special case of the general problem of bank holidays. The main original justifications for establishing days when all or most businesses and non-essential public services were required or expected to close were either (a) religious observance, or (b) the practical operation of some factories and other large businesses. It was argued that they could only work effectively with a full complement of workers and they therefore preferred to close down completely rather than allow individual workers to take holidays staggered over several months.
Reason (a) is surely indefensible and obsolete in a secular society. There are more practising muslims, hindus, sikhs and jews than practising christians in England. Moreover, the recently published 2021 Census has revealed that more than a third of the population have no religion.
Until the late 20th century reason (b) might have had some validity. However, the large textile mills, steelworks and coal mines are a thing of the past, and few businesses today can claim that they cannot cope with staggered holidays.
Disappointingly, the Trades Union Congress has actually argued for extra bank holidays, and in its 2019 election manifesto the Labour Party promised an additional holiday on each national saint’s day in their respective nations. This additional leisure time was seen as in improvement in the working conditions of employees.
However, what the advocates of additional (and existing) bank holidays have failed to justify convincingly is why everybody must take their holiday at the same time. Few would begrudge hardworking employees a bit of extra time off. The UK’s Working Time Regulations 1998 (derived from the EU’s Working Time Directive) stipulate an annual minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid holiday, which works out at 28 days for full time workers. A strong case can be made for increasing this by two or three days or more. But would it not be better if workers were free to take both existing and any extra holidays at times to suit them - rather than being forced collectively to join the holiday traffic jams on the motorways or the queues at the airports and railway stations – not to mention paying premium prices for travel to and accommodation at their holiday destinations? Surely there is a better way of arranging our leisure time?
Opposed to this plea for a rational approach are some powerful supporters of the status quo: the retail, entertainment, tourist and hospitality industries. They point out that much of their business is done on or during the run up to bank holidays (especially Christmas), and that abolition of bank holidays would reduce their total annual turnover and profits.
I am very sceptical of this argument. I have seen no evidence that the addition of extra bank holidays in the past, such as for royal weddings or jubilees, has added to the annual national income – rather than simply displacing it from one day to another. On the contrary, when the provisional GDP figures for Quarter 2 (April to June) 2022 were released, one of the reasons cited for the monthly decline of 0.6% was the loss of output on the Queen’s platinum jubilee bank holiday. See this BBC report for a fuller discussion.
So what should be done about it?
As suggested above, my preference would be the complete abolition of bank holidays and their replacement with a compensating increased statutory minimum of paid holidays – say, 38 days initially, rising to 40 per year. This would allow employees to plan their holidays and occasional days off at times of their own choosing, while enabling employers to plan their work schedules in a measured way rather than in frenetic bursts. It would also have the benefit that employers would be unable to count bank holidays as part of the statutory minimum paid holidays (which is currently permitted) while they would not be obliged to pay double time or time and a half for working on a bank holiday (as is provided in many pay agreements).
Above all my proposal would put an end to the ordeal of jammed motorways, overcrowded trains and airports and overpriced hotels that results from our current system of bank holidays. It would also render unnecessary the total shutdowns that prevent or obstruct normal business during extended bank holiday periods (especially Christmas/New Year).
I am under no illusion that this proposal would be popular or that it would be easy for any government to implement. There would be huge, mostly irrational opposition from the industrial sectors mentioned above, and the christians would undoubtedly protest against the withdrawal of their undeserved privileges. Perhaps the latter could be neutralised by guaranteeing that religious adherents could not be required to work on their special religious days. This would put Eid, Diwali, Yom Kippur etc on the same footing as Christmas Day and Good Friday (although this may already be covered by the Equality Act).
However, I doubt whether common sense will actually prevail. I fully expect that in every December for the foreseeable future the ears of supermarket shoppers will continue to be assailed by the sounds of Jingle Bells, Bing Crosby’s crooning and choirs of Herald Angels singing.
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Historical footnote
Bank holidays were formally introduced by the Bank Holidays Act of 1871 although they had existed informally for many years before. The Act provided that:
“No person shall be compelled to make any payment or to do any act upon such bank holidays which he would not be compelled to do or make on Christmas Day or Good Friday, and the obligation to make such payment and do such act shall apply to the day following the bank holiday; and the making of such payment and do such act on such following day shall be equivalent to payment of the money or performance of the act”.
In plainer English this meant that employees could not be required to work and nobody could be required to settle a debt on a bank holiday. This was an extension of the already existing common law rights which applied on Christmas Day and Good Friday. The additional days were set out in schedules – four in England and Ireland, five in Scotland. Since then, of course, the number of such days has been increased and the dates changed. At the same time, the scope of bank holidays has evolved and grown so that most businesses and non-essential services are closed. However, many retail businesses (especially the larger ones) do open on some of the bank holidays. There are restrictions on trading on Sundays and Christmas Day in England and Wales and on New Year's Day and Christmas Day in Scotland. There is no automatic right to time off on these days, but banks close and the majority of the working population is granted time off work or extra pay for working on these days, depending on their contracts.
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