“Are you working over Christmas?” I asked the waitress at my local diner in New Hampshire last Thursday – December 23rd.
Erica looked bewildered. “No,” she said. “We’re closed Christmas Day.”
My mistake. I’d just been on the phone to an editor in London who’d wanted early copy for the late January issue because no-one was going to be in the office “over Christmas”. I’d forgotten that, in New Hampshire, “over Christmas” means December 25th. In London and much of the rest of Europe, it’s a term of art stretching as far into mid-January as you can get away with.
In America, the Christmas holiday is what it says: a holiday to observe Christmas. If it happens to fall on a Saturday or Sunday, tough. See you at work Monday morning. But across the Atlantic, if Christmas and New Year fall on the weekend, the ensuing weeks are eaten up by so many holidays they can’t even come up with names for them. I see from the well-named “Beautiful Ireland” calendar this newspaper sent me in lieu of a handsome bonus for calling the US elections correctly that January 3rd 2005 is a holiday in Ireland and Britain – the Morning After The Morning After Hogmanay – and the lucky Scots get January 4th off too – the First Hogtuesday After Hogmonday? Eventually, the entire Scottish economy will achieve the happy state of their enchanted village of Brigadoon and show up for one day every hundred years.
Mark Steyn, “Happy Christmas Bank Holiday Thursday”, The Irish Times, 2004-12.
December 24, 2018
QotD: “Working over Christmas”
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