Do you celebrate Christmas?

[foxxycat]

I celebrate it as a almost week long break from work but that's it. the gift giving is lets say=annoying?! One year I told the family Christmas is for kids and I won't be buying for the adults (most of us buy what we want by ourselves) and I didn't want to waste hard earned money on presents that will end up in goodwill next month anyways so now we only do gifts for the kids. the adults get gift cards. No gift exchange. Too many people. too much money.

I don't put up a tree anymore. It's been super dry the past few years and I always worry about a fire so we don't do that anymore. I have had trees for several years. I just get tired of the mess and moving everything around. The cat's don't care for the tree so I don't bother. I have a small plug in tree we use in my house. but we don't have big get togethers at my house. too small. So we go visit other people's houses. Personally it cuts into my reading time so I don't really enjoy get togethers. The kids play outside or up in their rooms and it's just a short get together-we eat-we watch football-some of us sleep for an hour-then gab a bit more then we all go home.

I don't have a faith but I respect that others have a faith and want to participate. That's the freedom of religion-everyone should be free to celebrate how they see fit.

As far as the cats=they like it when I am home=they get more treats and I go outside with them so they can have someone to walk around the woods but this year we already have snow and ice so we probably will stay inside unless Honeybee is up for a walk in the snow=only if it's warm. Just another day. Nothing special...read my books. eat something yummy. Pet my cats. Life is good.

 

[Winchester]

 
I celebrate it as a almost week long break from work but that's it. ....

Rick told me that when he's done working today, he doesn't have to go back to work until the Tuesday after New Year's!  Must be nice! I've not had that much time off at one time (other than the knee operation) since I left International Paper. I'm so jealous of people who get long intervals off for holidays and such. Although I'd probably just sleep through the whole thing anyway. 

 

[foxxycat]

We gave up many holidays during the year to have these days off. Most people get federal holidays off. We don't. Then the last contract they took away 2 holidays and exchanged for PTO. so it may seem like the same days but the point of having 5 holidays in one week was to give the people who work 7 days a week a nice week long break to share with their families. Martin Luther king day-veterans day-Presidents day-and 2 others that other people get off. We have right now only new years day then memorial day, 4th july, labor day and two for thanksgiving. we don't have those other various federal holidays that schools and other places have. Now the next contract I am sure they will take away even more holidays. We used to get 10 days off at once. now we have to work 2 days during Christmas break=many of the support staff are off-many of our vendors are off during that week-so it's almost a joke to have people come in. most people saved their PTO days to not come in-then the few who are here-is not enough to do enough of the work. It would seem cheaper to just call off work and save the light/heating bill for a handful of people vs 50 people.

This year is the first year we have a white Christmas in a long time. I would love it if it snowed all at once from now until the new year then no more snow. LOL. And yes it feels Christmassy.

 

[Winchester]

When I worked in the paper plant, we had Labor Day and Christmas. Sometimes the 4th of July. But having downtime meant that the machines were down and it took too long to build the heat back up in the dryer cans and to get production back up....can't have that. I remember one year, I was laid-off from work and we had scheduled a huge Memorial Day picnic for that Monday. And the Thursday before Memorial Day, my boss called me back to work, starting Memorial Day. I was furious and when my boss very snottily said to me, "Well, what are ya gonna do about it?" I said, "I'm taking a vacation day!" He couldn't believe it, but I had given him enough notice that he had no choice but to give it to me.

When I first started in the Planning officer, I was amazed at how many holidays we get: MLK Day, Presidents' Day, Good Friday, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, etc. I was amazed. And I still am. After almost 17 years here, I'm still not used to having holidays off. I don't know that I'll ever get used to it.

 

[jtbo]

1 to 1.5 month summer vacation (paid 100% with 50% of that time's pay added coming back bonus so 150% paycheck from vacation time), week of autumn vacation, week of winter vacation, many places keep doors closed if there is only 1 or 2 days between Christmas holidays/new year.

Then there are midsummer festival, eastern, celebration of workforce day etc...

In China I have heard many of them work 12 hours a day as minimum, 7 days a week. In Japan there is also longer days and what I have heard many takes work to home too.

However you can't touch summer holidays of Finns, because historically many people (especially schoolkids) had to take part into farming, such holidays were decided, these days there are very few farmers, but nobody is willing to give up their long paid summer vacations.

It does help to boost economy of course and tourists coming in here during summer might actually think someone lives in here as traffic on local roads is easily 3 times more in late June to early August than rest of the year and during January when some Finns are doing no alcohol month traffic gets cut down by 50% from that low level, so that you could actually put table on road and have a dinner there without hurrying before any cars come.

Without that summer boost however this area would die off very fast, summer cabins and their owners keep grocery store in our village by their added buying, local people are so small in numbers that with today's very high delivery costs for small orders in smaller shops, it would die.

Also Christmas boost sales a lot, that is 2nd big help local grocery store gets, so even I don't like commercial Christmas, it is part of reason what makes life here possible.