I Declare a Holiday

So, in the United States we get, what? Six legal holidays? New Year's, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, right? Maybe seven, if you count Columbus Day, which isn't a legal holiday everywhere. I say this just for reference, because now I give you a list of the legal holidays we celebrate here in the state of Sachsen:

New Year's Day
Good Friday
Easter Monday
Labor Day
Ascension
Whit Monday
Day of German Unity
Reformation Day
Penance Day
Christmas
St. Stephen's Day

Unfortunately we don't live in Bavaria, which is predominantly Catholic and, as a result, gets four holidays we don't get because everybody here is Lutheran — Epiphany, Corpus Christi, Assumption Day, and All Saints Day. I mention this just because last Wednesday was Penance Day, a Protestant holiday celebrated only in Sachsen. And once again I was struck with how strange these holidays are to me. With the exception of New Year's, Christmas, and Day of German Unity, nothing really happens on these holidays. There don't seem to be any widely participated in traditions associated with them, I guess because they're mostly religious holidays in a country where people aren't particularly religious anymore. Mostly all that happens is that the city just shuts down. And I don't mean like the U.S. on Labor Day. I mean it really shuts down. Not just banks and offices and schools. Every retail establishment closes — shopping malls and grocery stores and pharmacies. As far as I've been able to tell, the only things that stay open are gas stations and some restaurants and sometimes museums. The city turns into a ghost town. Traffic vaporizes, public transit runs a skeleton operation.

Almost every one of these holidays came as a shock to me our first year here. I would walk to the grocery store for milk only to find the place dark and locked. I think once Jake actually went into work to find his lab completely abandoned. Once we got over the frustration of these sneak attack holidays, Jake and I usually found ourselves at a loss as to how to spend a free day when nothing's open. When I was teaching English I often asked my students how they spent holidays like Penance Day. "What do you do," I'd say, "when everything is shut down?" They'd shrug like the question was completely irrelevant and say things like, "sleep" or "eat" or "work in my garden".

I suppose for them passing a day in a sleeping city is no big deal, because in Germany the same thing happens every Sunday. I was surprised to come here and learn that grocery stores close on Sundays, but for me as a Mormon, it didn't change my lifestyle. In our church we are instructed to "keep the Sabbath day holy", and while there is a good deal of personal interpretation allowed for this commandment, some things are specifically discouraged, like working and shopping or conducting business. Coming here from Utah, where one could sit down in the middle of Main Street on a Sunday morning and play a game of solitaire without ever having to pick up the game to dodge a car, wasn't a huge adjustment.

But the holiday thing has been a tough one to wrap my capitalist brain around. I'm used to being able to go bowling on Thanksgiving or to the movies on Christmas. But I wasn't always just on the consumer end, either. I missed the fireworks two Independence Days in a row because I had to work making take-out pizzas for the people who were watching the fireworks. That's the give and take of capitalism, right? So every time one of these obscure holidays pops up, I find myself looking at all the darkened shops and all the strolling people with nothing to do, and I inevitably think, "Doesn't anybody here want to make money?!" And the answer I imagine the country shouting back is still annoying to me, but increasingly sensible: "Not as much as we want a day off!"

Maybe Americans could afford to sacrifice a little convenience and entertainment in order to take an occasional day and just breathe. Of course, that would mean remembering to buy ice before Thanksgiving. And the odds of that happening are pretty slim.



JEM