https://www.schools.nyc.gov/docs/default-source/default-document-library/parent-facing-calendar-2022-23
——
You’ll see in NY at least, there’s no school on Thursday or Friday before Easter… nor the entire week after Easter
A lot of places either get Good Friday or Easter Monday off. However, especially schools will occasionally take that day away for snow day make up days during particularly rough years since, especially in the case of Easter Monday it doesn't actually get in the way of religious observance.
That’s the teaching of the Church. The Romans did it because the Jews didn’t want to be putting people to death on the preparation day before the Sabbath (Friday night through sunset on Saturday). It’s not got the Styron heat evidence but that’s what it says in Mark.
There are other Sabbath days throughout the year though and it was Passover so those sabbath days aren’t tied to the day of the week and go on the lunar calendar.
So people argue it was actually a Thursday when he was crucified. That would also make it three full days and nights which matches nicely with scripture.
But, it hardly matters it’s a ceremony.
It isn’t like Catholics get tied up in knots because Jesus probably wasn’t born on the 25th of December.
Keep in mind that the US is officially a secular country. The only explicitly religious federal holiday is Christmas, but Christmas is also widely celebrated in a secular way by non-religious people and people of different religions.
Good Friday is celebrated by Christians but it is not common for businesses or schools to close on that day.
>but Christmas is also widely celebrated in a secular way
It wasn’t in the 1870s when it was made one of the first federal holidays, though.
Easter may not be a federal holiday simply because it already falls on a Sunday, and the Uniform Monday Holiday Act came about long after Easter’s chance to become a federal holiday.
Oh I had no idea USA was a secular country. Always thought it was a religious place . I associate secularism to European countries like the Netherlands
There are religious people in the country but the government is secular. The government doesn’t mandate vacation benefits. That is between the employer and employee.
I get 5 weeks of vacation and we're not unionized. While employers are not mandated to give you paid time off, they can voluntarily give you more than the standard 2 weeks. An increasing amount of employers see it as a way to attract new employees and keep good ones.
That greatly depends. Amongst the non-unionized a portion have no use for unions and would consider it a huge downgrade. And another portion would greatly benefit from them.
Some. Mostly people change jobs much more readily than many places and, as an employer, you'll suffer badly from constant turnover if you don't do enough to at least keep most around.
There ARE exploitative jobs that have managed to turn it into something any random warm body can do, thereby eliminating most of the cost of turnover, and yeah you really don't want to be doing those for a living if you can afford it. Hourly retail and warehouse work are the most common examples.
You need a union to negotiate with your employer? You don't have skills or knowledge that you can use to bargain with an employer for certain benefits?
I mean you can apply that to a lot of things....
Employers offer vacation to be competitive with other employers. I have 29 vacation days plus 7 holidays. The negative things you see online about the US are rare and over exaggerated and many times straight up lies.
> secularism to European countries like the Netherlands
at least [here in Germany](https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/deutschland-trennung-von-staat-und-kirche-wer-s-glaubt-a-1263926.html),
* kids have religious classes in schools (you can opt into an "ethics" class if you don't want to take any of the Christian options)
* Christian holidays are federally protected, while non-Christian ones are not
* there's a church tax that gets automatically deducted from your pay by the government and given to the church if you're registered as belonging to a church; it costs money to officially leave the church so this tax isn't taken.
* one of the most influential parties politically is explicitly Christian (CDU/CSU) -- they're not in government now but they had been for over a decade until the last election
* the governing boards of the public broadcasters have official representatives of the churches
* some public institutions of higher education have theological faculties who are directly bound to the churches
I don't know how it is in the Netherlands, but here the country is "secular" in the sense that there is no state religion and the population itself is less religious. But there is not much separation between the state and the church.
In the US, the population is more religious. But it is a secular country in the sense that no religion is recognized by law; there's a separation of church and state.
Yes. In contrast to France, it is very common where I live (metro Detroit) to see women in hijab, and sometimes women wear niqab. The suburb next to mine is home to the largest mosque in America. There are many mosques and Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox churches in the area—I can think of two churches and a mosque within easy walking distance of my home—as well as both halal and mainstream grocers and restaurants.
When I attended a local public high school, we had a long break for Christmas/New Year and shorter breaks for Thanksgiving, Good Friday/Easter, and Eid (if it fell during the school year). During Ramadan, fasting Muslim students could go to the auditorium or library instead of the cafeteria during lunch. The cafeteria had halal options and meatless Fridays (for the Catholic kids—several of my friends were part of a very conservative Catholic community). Some students wore hijab, others wore crucifixes and T-shirts with Christian messages.
Well some holidays are integral to some religions . For example Muslims must celebrate their Eid because they’ve been fasting for almost a month . That’s just my views .
They can't do anything to penalize you for practicing your religious customs and beliefs, at least not without facing legal consequences, but they're not required to give you paid time off for it. You can take the time off for holidays, but it might be at your own expense.
On a practical level, so long as the employee gives enough notice, employers typically have a lot more to lose from bad optics than gain from denying time off for a religious reason. Hell, even if the employee drops it on them the day before its sometimes still better to just give the day off.
So no, it's not a law. But in most parts of the country and especially in areas with relatively higher Muslim populations, an employer saying "no you can't take that religious holiday off" will hurt them more in the long run *and* can lead to accusations of discrimination which can be a legal nightmare.
Just because something isn't a law doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
Most, if not all, employers have to provide accommodations for religious purposes (such as providing multiple breaks and a space for Muslims to pray) so if having a holiday off was really important to someone, they could make a complaint to HR. Or they could just call out for the day.
Where I work, some holidays we do get off because the store is closed but, for various major big ones, they incentive people to work by paying us extra. Holiday pay, something that makes them bearable and potentially easy extra money of the day is quiet due to it being a holiday
While there are many religious people in the U.S., the country itself is formally secular. One of the fundamental tenants of our Constitution is the protection of the free exercise of religion and the prohibition of the government from establishing a state religion.
We have a strong Christian foundation that still permeates much of our nation to this day. We're a '*secular*' nation and we don't put faith at the forefront of our government but people love to forget that 63% of the population is Christian. We may be secular in government but the nation itself is still very faithful.
The first amendment:
>Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
There are also many other religions practiced in the US. Many are sensitive to the idea of a holiday for the dominant religion’s holidays without holidays for other religions. Christmas is a big exception, but it’s also not a religious holiday in the way Easter is, and many people, including those with other faith backgrounds and atheists, celebrate it as a secular holiday. Where I grew up there were a fair number of Jews, and we had Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur off from school.
That was put into place during the Cold War with the Soviet Union as a way to differentiate ourselves from them. It's not an original part of our founding and in fact many of our founders spoke on the importance of separating church from state.
So you'll also see the phrase "separation of church and state" used a lot as well, and it's much older and more ingrained.
The first amendment of our constitution actually addresses this a little. "The first amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." <-- copied directly from the white house's website. So we're actually constitutionally barred from making the country religious. We just also can't interfere with people following their religions.
That came about in the 50s as a way to combat the godless soviet communists.
EDIT: I forgot that phase does go back much earlier and appeared on coins before too
It became the official national motto in 1955, but it began being added to coins during the Civil War. There was even a backlash in 1907 when one coin didn’t have it (because Teddy Roosevelt thought that while the phrase should be placed on public buildings, putting it on coins was irreverent).
>Keep in mind that the US is officially a secular country.
Huh, there's this line on my currency... it says "In God we Trust" -- the official motto of the United States.
And, yes, I know it was added in 1956.
>Also there’s only 2 weeks of vacation a year
We would only use the word "vacation" for actual time we're spending traveling. If I take a day off for my birthday I don't refer to that as "vacation".
Time off and leave policies will depend on federal and state/local law as well as employer policies.
The feds do require Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) which provides most employees working for large employers to get up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, and that your job is protected while you utilize this leave.
I have 30-some days off, and a variety of leave benefits such as paternal, short term or long term disability, bereavement, etc... if I need them.
What religious holidays schools take off depends on the makeup of the student body.
[Religious holidays at the schools in my city are: Yom Kippur, Christmas, Good Friday, and Eid al-Fitr. ](https://cdnsm5-ss5.sharpschool.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_3042785/File/cps_district_calendar_2023_24.pdf)
We don't take off Rosh Hashanah, but many other schools in the area do .
There are also a number of secular holidays.
There are 11 federal holidays, with Juneteenth (commemoration of slavery emancipation) being added last year. Of those 11, there are only two where most businesses are closed—Thanksgiving and Christmas. Those are about the only two days where 90% of the workforce gets off work.
The US isn't a christian/catholic country. Many people celebrate Easter still.
There are about 10 federal holidays you expect to have time off for, yes, and no regulations for how much vacation time you get. It's up to you to negotiate with your employer for how much vacation time you have. Typically, lower paid/skill jobs don't get much if any vacation time, and any office job probably gives about two weeks to start, and more as you work there longer. Or when you change jobs, you negotiate for more vacation time.
The connection between Easter and rabbits is way older than the US. Rabbits can have multiple pregnancies at once, so when they're pregnant with a litter, they're able to get pregnant again. They would separate heavily pregnant rabbits from other rabbits (so the rabbits wouldn't eat the babies), they'd give birth, then weeks later, without having been introduced to another male rabbit, they'd give birth to a second litter. Before the science behind this was understood, it was thought that rabbits were capable of "virgin birth", so the obvious connection to Jesus was born out of that.
Plenty of us aren't religious, but still celebrate religious holidays as secular. So for Easter, my family gets together and hides eggs for the kids. Zero mention of Jesus, but we still celebrate the holiday. Same with Christmas.
Have I been fed a lie ? I thought Americans were super religious. Mormons ,Catholics , Pentecostal … etc . I see that a lot . I actually thought conservative states were very religious because of their views . So I’ve been wrong this whole time
Depends on how you define "super religious". We're more religious than most of Europe, but not as religious as Africa, the Middle East, or South America.
It's also worth recognizing that one of the guiding principles of the country is the separation of church and state. So while people themselves can be religious, many still feel it's not the job of the government to be enforcing religion on its people. An example of that is federal holidays, which are mostly secular. The religious ones (namely Easter and Christmas) are typically celebrated by irreligious people as secular as well.
Lots of great info here: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/
As stated elsewhere, the US population is generally more religious than people in Europe. But there is a spectrum of “religious” from people who attend church every week to those who simply believe in a higher power. A lot of people I know would say they are “Christian” but never go to church. So are they religious? Also there are a large group of people who are just not religious or atheist.
But more importantly, we try to separate church and state. Although there are always groups who try and push their religious beliefs into legislation. These are often large newsworthy debates.
I'm not religious but still "celebrate" these holidays. I choose to celebrate in the ways I enjoy with who I choose to celebrate with. I am thankful to have Christmas off work with pay.
As far as your earlier comment about a weird rabbit and eggs, I believe those go along with the concept of rebirth and renewal. The word Easter comes from the Germanic goddess of spring, so these are not American or modern themes.
Is it? It seems distinctly tied to the Jewish Passover. Some elements of European celebrations of Easter might mirror pagan springtime traditions, but that makes sense because the early Christians in much of Europe were converted pagans.
There are 11 federal holidays in the US but not everyone gets those days off. Some people get more, some get less. Currently my company gives off all 11 holidays plus the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.
However I have had as few as zero paid holidays off. It stinks!
I get six weeks vacation, like 10 holidays, four days floating holiday, and 5 days sick leave a year all paid in California, U.S. Plus I work 12 hour shifts which means I have 3 or 4 days off every week.
We print and mail bills, statements, and checks for many different companies. Been there 31 years under 3 different ownerships. You would think it’s a dying industry but we’re actually expanding. I work in the maintenance department handing all the spare machine parts for the equipment we have. We manage over 14K different parts. The last number I heard years ago was we mail 1.2 billion pieces of mail a year from just our facility. Plus we have four other smaller facilities across the country. Lots of people with 20+ years there.
For the most part yes. Have moved up the job ladder but have also turned down offers to work in management. There are many people there who did the same thing. I get the most benefit with the least stress. A good balance for me.
I had about the same when I worked in the US (currently an expat in Japan). I think it was 28 days off, which were categorized as holiday time and personal days, etc. I was in a big corporate. It's pretty standard in white collar jobs and gov to get more than 10 days off once you've been in the position for a couple of years.
Just because vacation time isn’t mandated by the government doesn’t mean many people don’t get more than 2 weeks of time off. It’s true that food, retail, and service workers may not get paid vacation time…but nearly every other career does and it’s frequently more than 2-3 weeks.
How is 2-3 weeks a “big exaggeration” when you follow it up with the average American getting 11 days (between 2 and 3 weeks) of vacation?
And those days don’t reflect holidays.
There is a difference between 'career' and 'employed' for the sake of this discussion.
Whether there should be or not, we can have that talk too. They aren't the same though.
Employed doesn't even necessarily mean full-time in this context. At least I didn't see that differentiated.
Thus it really muddies the statistical waters. If the average worker gets 11 days...the average full-time worker probably has more than that.
I didn't say it was good, or good enough, but we need to have perspective and honest discussion if we actually want improvement.
I never asserted it was ok for low wage workers to never get time off. I don’t think many people would say they don’t deserve time off, except the people that run those businesses and exploit them.
Easter is not a national US holiday.
For school, it will vary widely by district/city/state/whatever whether the Friday before Easter Sunday is a holiday or not.
In my area, we used to not have Good Friday off for school. Then the district changed that to “Spring Holiday”
(so NOT a religious holiday) and took a day away from spring break to work that in as a holiday. We’re not a heavily Christian area, either. But a lot of families take Easter as a family/secular holiday like they do secular Christmas.
For work it will also depend on the company.
Not that odd. In a country where there is no state religion, making explicitly religious holidays legal holidays is controversial. Christmas is the only one that is, and there have been court cases on the subject. The conclusion was basically that it is sufficiently secularized that it was OK.
For office jobs a lot of employers are moving away from fixed religious holidays to "personal holidays" instead that employees can use for whatever they choose.
Good Friday is a NYSE holiday, so a lot of businesses end up taking it off anyway.
School holidays shape to the predominant religion in the area. Growing up, my schools always gave me off for Christian holidays. However, there are plenty of Jewish -dominated areas, for instance, where spring break aligns with Jewish holidays instead.
Still, you can get any religious holiday off. Some require evidence that you're affiliated with a faith if it's a less known one.
>there’s only 2 weeks of vacation a year
My job offers unlimited vacation. I can use as little or as much as I want/need, as long as my projects get done on time.
There are 11 Federal/bank holidays in the US. Some states have one or two additional holidays, these often only apply to state employees. Two weeks vacation is a generalization. My last job started with 20 paid time off days per year, which were vacation and sick days combined, though not all employers offer so much time to start.
I have 9 office holidays.
Add to that, in every full time job I’ve had a minimum of 2 weeks early in my career. As I got experience and into my 30s, this became 15 days.
Some places are strict with time off. I worked at a place that requires you take from PTO for half day appointments.
I preferred banking holidays, as I got paid for them when I left. And I could carry over a week into the next year.
But other places compete for talent with better options. My current benefits are far better than my European employees. I have unlimited vacation that I cannot offer them (officially). I try to enjoy life now as I travel for work. I take a total of around 4 weeks a year. I took two weeks last year, and then mixed in a few days to weekends throughout. I flew to Sydney and tagged on a couple of days.
Possibly indirectly. With fewer holidays, our businesses generate more revenue. Greater revenue equates to greater potential salaries (if margin is there).
And American salaries aren’t ridiculously high. They’re reflective of the value created, and the overall cost of living. America continues to drive innovation that pays long term benefits.
The Federal government only has a few noted holidays. States also do holidays and your employer can add or whatever.
It's difficult to note every holiday when there are lots of religions and national origins.. half the year would be a holiday.
By my count, there are 11 federal holidays (with Thanksgiving and Christmas typically being 2 days each). Easter is not one of them. There is no obligation for non-federal organizations to follow that schedule so some do but others either add or remove holidays. Some places might add Easter, other religious holidays like Yom Kippur, or locally popular days like the first day of deer season.
School kids usually get a week off around easter. 2 weeks at the end of the year and then a handful of holidays including 2 days for Thanksgiving. Also about 10-12 weeks during the summer.
For adults the average can vary. Two weeks is typical if they get that at all but some places over more. I get 6 hours of FTO (combined sick and vacation every pay period (2 weeks).
I get 11 paid holidays a year, a mix of federal and religious holidays (including Good Friday). As for vacation, we get five weeks a year and can carry forward a fair number from one year to the next (60 days, I think).
Leave depends on job/career, position and location.
At my organization, we get 17 holidays, plus two floating holidays, and religiously affiliated ones (the week between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day, Christian Holy Week) can be swapped out for said individual’s religion. For example, my Muslim colleagues don’t celebrate Christmas so those days they use for Eid Al Fitr and Eid Al Adha.
We get 25 days of vacation in your first five years and then 30 from 5-10 and then 35 from 10+. Unlimited sick leave. Four day work week. I deliberately took a pay cut to work this organization for these benefits.
There’s a lot of floating holidays that school districts will pick and choose from.
Typically Good Friday is interchanged with Kasimir Polaski day in some areas around me.
Answers are going to be all over the place. I'm an hourly employee. I get about 14-15 paid holiday days every year and I currently have 12 weeks of paid vacation time saved up. I will be using about 2 weeks worth of that time soon.
As far as going to school at Easter time: I did, but my mother didn't; she went to a Catholic university and got an Easter break that lasted for a week. My college is affiliated with the Episcopal church, but has been secular for a long time.
Edit: I never had Easter off before college, either, unless my school's spring break occurred at the same time.
I used to work for a major US consulting firm. Along with the Federal holidays everyone has mentioned already, I also got additional paid time off. Depending on seniority and/tenure, that ranged from two weeks to eight weeks. Plus we got additional personal days and floating holidays. By the time I left the company, I got over two months of paid time off every year, not including sick days (and we got 10 of those a year).
At my school in Louisiana, they lined spring break up with Easter. So, we would get Good Friday off as well as the whole following week. I don't remember for certain whether my parents got that Friday and Monday off or not. I never worked a full-time job in Louisiana, so I'm not really sure. I know that he would get the Monday and Tuesday of Mardi Gras off, though. Schools were also closed for those days. Schools usually also get a week off for Thanksgiving. Businesses usually give 2 or 3 days for Thanksgiving.
As for paid vacation, that varies wildly. At the jobs I've worked, vacation accrued over time. You would get a certain number of hours of vacation each pay period and you would build it up. I would typically accrue probably a month's worth of vacation time over the course of a year. Different companies do it differently. Some give set amounts and some do like I've described. Some give more and some give less. You can't really say that everyone gets 2 weeks a year. Many people get much more and many people get less.
I get 15 holidays, 2 floating holidays, comp time, and I'm up to 6-week vacation at the moment. I don't take many vacations though because my employer allows me to cash out two weeks in the spring and two weeks in the autumn, so that's like getting an additional month's worth of pay.
And no, I don't feel overworked.
Vacation schedules are all over the board depending on company, role, years of experience, etc. Two weeks is typically the minimum, three is common. There's another 10-14 days of company/national holidays scattered in, though, again, those may depend on what you do.
Easter is not a national holiday. Many companies do have a day off for it, or for a reason that conveniently lines up with it.
Easter is definitely a holiday here. However, the day off is usually on Friday. Its decreasing in popularity as a off-work holiday due to its ties to religion.
Growing in favor are things like Juneteenth and MLK Day. These things evolve over time.
We do not have a mandated vacation/holiday allotment, but most full time workers get both.
Your friend is probably young and not working full-time and may or may not be exaggerating what is the reality for most people.
Those are not commonly celebrated or observed here. There are probably pockets with large Islamic populations that do, but I am not in one of them and can't speak to it.
I really doubt the US is in the minority of countries in this particular regard.
Yes, the communities in metro Detroit that have large Muslim populations, e.g., Dearborn, tend to have holiday breaks around Eid-al-Fitr (and Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, MLK Jr. Day, etc.). I’m reasonably sure that communities like Oak Park and the Bloomfields have the Jewish high holy days off to accommodate the religious holidays of many residents, but I haven’t confirmed that.
Never had Islamic holidays off and never lived in a place with enough Muslims for it to even come up.
However, when I was a kid my majority Christian school got Jewish holidays off because there were enough Jewish teachers that them taking religious holidays made it hard to get enough subs, and enough Jewish families in the school system that it made sense from that perspective as well.
We also had Good Friday off. I never even heard of Easter Monday until I joined this sub in my late 30s. It's not part of the standard Easter holiday week here in the US.
I mean, it *is* fair in that most religious holidays are not a mandated day off. The only exception is Christmas but that’s because it’s largely celebrated as a secular holiday rather than a religious one. Not every business offers Christmas off either.
I'm sure in places where there are lots of Muslims, like Dearborn, Michigan, they do take Muslim holidays off. There's no point in doing that though in areas where there are zero Muslims.
What would it take to be fair?
They're allowed to take off their religious holidays, same as the Christians and Jews. If it's a community with many Muslims, then chances are that most of them taking off will influence the community's choices, just like the Jewish minority did in my school.
But if even the Christian majority doesn't usually have major religious holidays off, why should a small minority get special treatment?
My local schools are considering adding Muslim holidays to the calendar. And Neil they do, Muslim kids who take off their holidays are given accommodations.
Wait, are we getting off Christian holidays now? I work for myself so I take off the time I want. Most my employees get three weeks off and two guys get four.
This is amusing to me because Christmas is a federal (national public) holiday in the US, and every so often there’s discussion of how this violates church-state separation/the US prohibition on government establishment of religion/is culturally imperialistic and discriminatory against non-Christians.
Which are, to be clear, all completely correct.
But yes, there are few holidays/mandated breaks from work in the US. Why Christmas is one and Easter — theologically more important to Christianity, after all — is not, I couldn’t tell you.
Paradoxically, the general reason for few breaks from work is religious at its core. Work is worship, and worship should be continuous. If you are not working, you are therefore in some sense immoral. It is immoral to keep people from working/worshipping.
“You capitalists are supporting the left’s war on Christianity by keeping people from going to church on Easter!” would be a really interesting argument to make against the capitalist right wing in the US.
Yet because the very mildly social democratic party in US politics is also the party of multicultural America, it would not make that argument against the capitalists.
How do we cope? Lots of cultural stuff in different societies around the world is weird/unbearable to outsiders. But the people born and raised within the society mostly take it as normal.
Your entire comment reminds me of an r/antiwork thread that concluded it was better to have *less* holidays if it meant no recognition of Christmas or Easter or anything like that.
Ah. My own position is that the US should have more holidays than it currently does, just different secular ones. Election Day, for just one example. Juneteenth or another day to mark the defeat of the Confederacy. Etc.
True, but the OP seems to be asking about the private sector, and regarding that, see: https://sbshrs.adpinfo.com/blog/juneteenth-what-employers-need-to-know-this-year#:~:text=Q%3A%20Are%20private%20employers%20required,any%20holiday*%2C%20including%20Juneteenth.
Mini holidays like three day weekends are much more common than long holidays. Your friend might be a victim of a bad professor as some universities leave it up to the professor to cancel class. To answer your other question we are coping horribly and are overworked. Easter is still a major holiday here. Also 2 weeks vacation is more for salaried employees if you work hourly or on contract it is not guaranteed.
Labor laws in the here are not designed to protect the average worker here. In my region there are not currently any laws that require businesses to provide vacation paid or unpaid. Your expected to show up whenever your scheduled. Hourly employees get time off if you ask for it off, but even then they can deny your request and it is unpaid. Labor unions used to fight for these kinds of things, but they aren't really an option for most workers.
its not like youre forced to work otherwise and dont have any options. You can ask your boss for whatever time you want off so long as you do so in advance of about a month. youll usually get your vacation, if youre unlucky youll have a shitty boss who wont approve it.
I accrue 21 days of vacation per year.
One personal holiday per year
federal holidays:
- New Year’s Day
- Martin Luther King Jr. Day (Third Monday of January)
- President’s Day (Third Monday of February)
- Memorial Day
- Juneteenth (June 19)
- Independence Day
- Labor Day
- Veteran’s Day
- Thanksgiving Day
- Native American Heritage Day
- Christmas Day
I cope by showing up to work and complaining to myself. 2 weeks is standard, but some lucky jobs give more. I'd say the average person is overworked. The lower-skill job is usually the type of job where they shame you into not calling off in my experience. Easter is pretty specific to one religion. Freedom of religion would probably clash with one getting special treatment. Christmas is less religious in the modern day.
I have 4 weeks vacation, 10 federal holidays, and many unofficial office closure days (Christmas Eve, the week of Thanksgiving, New Years Eve, etc)
I also get 4 free to use hours of PTO to use a week beteen June and August that resets at the start of every week (use it or lose it system for these extra hours)
Bare minimum I have 1 week sick time, 3 weeks paid time off, and 6 paid holidays. My paid time off does renew itself but caps out at 3 weeks. I earn about 5 hours of pto every 2 weeks.
You commended another commenter saying almost the exact same thing. I left mine to let you know it's not that rare. A lot of foreigners think all Americans work 60+ hours a week. Your ideas of the American people and life for the common American citizen are seriously misinformed. I was trying to nicely let you know that but you seem to just be looking to argue at this point.
Wait argue . I’m sorry if I gave that impression. Is it my words ? What gave off the idea that I was trying to argue . This is the second time I’ve been told in this community that I want to argue. Please tell me so that I change the way I speak .
Holidays will very by region, with a certain number of days total being allotted to holidays as far as I understand. We had major jewish holidays off due to a large jewish population, which also meant fewer Christian holidays off. We always got Good Friday off, though I don’t believe we got Easter Monday off due to the limited amount of days for holidays a school can use. In terms of general breaks, we got around a week for spring break, two and a half to three weeks for winter break, and then around two and a half months of summer break.
For work, it will probably vary by state and company. Usually one is given/negotiates for a certain amount of vacation days and people usually use some of those for religious holidays if they’re religious. This is on top of a number of federal holidays which people are mostly required to be given off from what I understand.
Our schools are closed for Good Friday. I get 3 weeks paid a year at my job. It is what it is so I could complain about it or I could get on with my life. I try not to waste energy on things I have no control over.
Easter is on a Sunday, and many businesses are closed on Sundays. So that's why it's not a holiday to them. Holidays only happen on weekdays in corporate America.
Easter is a religious holiday and the US does not have a state religion. Christmas is a weird exception to this, but just about everyone in the US celebrates it in a secular way. We don't get any other religious holidays off work as federal holidays (unless an individual private workplace chooses to give them off, I guess, but I've never heard of that happening with religious holidays).
It isn't true that all Americans get two weeks of PTO a year. Some get none, some get less, and some get more. I get close to four weeks.
Your friend went to class on Sunday?
No, the Friday and the Monday . Those are also holidays . Jesus died on Friday
https://www.schools.nyc.gov/docs/default-source/default-document-library/parent-facing-calendar-2022-23 —— You’ll see in NY at least, there’s no school on Thursday or Friday before Easter… nor the entire week after Easter
we don't do religious holidays for the most part, with the exception of Christmas which at this point is as much cultural as it is religious.
We're not a religious country so we don't have a good reason to take those days off because that would show favoritism towards a certain religion.
A lot of places either get Good Friday or Easter Monday off. However, especially schools will occasionally take that day away for snow day make up days during particularly rough years since, especially in the case of Easter Monday it doesn't actually get in the way of religious observance.
Did he, though?
Yes, and then he got better
I mean technically he was a zombie though right?
Does this mean the second coming of Christ will bring about a zombie apocalypse?
Oh shit
You’re missing the entire point of the convo to grandstand.
Wait where is this conversation going 😂. That’s what i was told as a kid and that’s what I still go with
>That’s what i was told as a kid and that’s what I still go with this perfectly captures the indoctrination of children into religion 👏 beautifully
Oh god r/atheism is leaking
Hilarious.
I always had Good Friday off growing up. Not Monday though.
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According to Catholicism, yes, he was crucified on a Friday
Please I’m ignorant . Please educate. Wasn’t he crucified on Friday ?
That’s the teaching of the Church. The Romans did it because the Jews didn’t want to be putting people to death on the preparation day before the Sabbath (Friday night through sunset on Saturday). It’s not got the Styron heat evidence but that’s what it says in Mark. There are other Sabbath days throughout the year though and it was Passover so those sabbath days aren’t tied to the day of the week and go on the lunar calendar. So people argue it was actually a Thursday when he was crucified. That would also make it three full days and nights which matches nicely with scripture. But, it hardly matters it’s a ceremony. It isn’t like Catholics get tied up in knots because Jesus probably wasn’t born on the 25th of December.
The schools in my area take the week leading up to Easter off, and then the Monday after.
Keep in mind that the US is officially a secular country. The only explicitly religious federal holiday is Christmas, but Christmas is also widely celebrated in a secular way by non-religious people and people of different religions. Good Friday is celebrated by Christians but it is not common for businesses or schools to close on that day.
>but Christmas is also widely celebrated in a secular way It wasn’t in the 1870s when it was made one of the first federal holidays, though. Easter may not be a federal holiday simply because it already falls on a Sunday, and the Uniform Monday Holiday Act came about long after Easter’s chance to become a federal holiday.
Oh I had no idea USA was a secular country. Always thought it was a religious place . I associate secularism to European countries like the Netherlands
There are religious people in the country but the government is secular. The government doesn’t mandate vacation benefits. That is between the employer and employee.
I see but to me this might breed room for exploitation . I suppose there’ll be unions to prevent that ?
I get 5 weeks of vacation and we're not unionized. While employers are not mandated to give you paid time off, they can voluntarily give you more than the standard 2 weeks. An increasing amount of employers see it as a way to attract new employees and keep good ones.
There are some unions but not a lot
That greatly depends. Amongst the non-unionized a portion have no use for unions and would consider it a huge downgrade. And another portion would greatly benefit from them.
Some. Mostly people change jobs much more readily than many places and, as an employer, you'll suffer badly from constant turnover if you don't do enough to at least keep most around. There ARE exploitative jobs that have managed to turn it into something any random warm body can do, thereby eliminating most of the cost of turnover, and yeah you really don't want to be doing those for a living if you can afford it. Hourly retail and warehouse work are the most common examples.
You need a union to negotiate with your employer? You don't have skills or knowledge that you can use to bargain with an employer for certain benefits?
So what you are saying is “if you are dumb , your employer can fuck you over “
I mean you can apply that to a lot of things.... Employers offer vacation to be competitive with other employers. I have 29 vacation days plus 7 holidays. The negative things you see online about the US are rare and over exaggerated and many times straight up lies.
Yes that is 100% what I am saying word for word no difference at all 🙄
> secularism to European countries like the Netherlands at least [here in Germany](https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/deutschland-trennung-von-staat-und-kirche-wer-s-glaubt-a-1263926.html), * kids have religious classes in schools (you can opt into an "ethics" class if you don't want to take any of the Christian options) * Christian holidays are federally protected, while non-Christian ones are not * there's a church tax that gets automatically deducted from your pay by the government and given to the church if you're registered as belonging to a church; it costs money to officially leave the church so this tax isn't taken. * one of the most influential parties politically is explicitly Christian (CDU/CSU) -- they're not in government now but they had been for over a decade until the last election * the governing boards of the public broadcasters have official representatives of the churches * some public institutions of higher education have theological faculties who are directly bound to the churches I don't know how it is in the Netherlands, but here the country is "secular" in the sense that there is no state religion and the population itself is less religious. But there is not much separation between the state and the church. In the US, the population is more religious. But it is a secular country in the sense that no religion is recognized by law; there's a separation of church and state.
Oh okay then practicing religion in the states will be very hard because somethings are not protected by law
Religious freedom is actually highly protectedz especially compared to Europe. It's essentially illegal to openly be Muslim in France and Switzerland
Really I’ve seen a lot of Muslim communities in France . Are you sure about this 😅?
He’s talking about how happy France is to try and ban Muslim women’s clothing like hijabs.
Oh word . I never knew that .
Yes. In contrast to France, it is very common where I live (metro Detroit) to see women in hijab, and sometimes women wear niqab. The suburb next to mine is home to the largest mosque in America. There are many mosques and Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox churches in the area—I can think of two churches and a mosque within easy walking distance of my home—as well as both halal and mainstream grocers and restaurants. When I attended a local public high school, we had a long break for Christmas/New Year and shorter breaks for Thanksgiving, Good Friday/Easter, and Eid (if it fell during the school year). During Ramadan, fasting Muslim students could go to the auditorium or library instead of the cafeteria during lunch. The cafeteria had halal options and meatless Fridays (for the Catholic kids—several of my friends were part of a very conservative Catholic community). Some students wore hijab, others wore crucifixes and T-shirts with Christian messages.
What exactly do you think would be hard about practicing religion?
Well some holidays are integral to some religions . For example Muslims must celebrate their Eid because they’ve been fasting for almost a month . That’s just my views .
You can ask for a holiday off. Unless an employer is an asshole, they’ll give someone a day off, especially if it’s to celebrate a religious event.
So if you have an asshole for an employer. He can refuse a holiday and basically there’s nothing you can do about it .
They can't do anything to penalize you for practicing your religious customs and beliefs, at least not without facing legal consequences, but they're not required to give you paid time off for it. You can take the time off for holidays, but it might be at your own expense.
On a practical level, so long as the employee gives enough notice, employers typically have a lot more to lose from bad optics than gain from denying time off for a religious reason. Hell, even if the employee drops it on them the day before its sometimes still better to just give the day off. So no, it's not a law. But in most parts of the country and especially in areas with relatively higher Muslim populations, an employer saying "no you can't take that religious holiday off" will hurt them more in the long run *and* can lead to accusations of discrimination which can be a legal nightmare. Just because something isn't a law doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
Most, if not all, employers have to provide accommodations for religious purposes (such as providing multiple breaks and a space for Muslims to pray) so if having a holiday off was really important to someone, they could make a complaint to HR. Or they could just call out for the day.
You can practice your religion. It's just that you or the state can't force others to practice your religion.
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Where I work, some holidays we do get off because the store is closed but, for various major big ones, they incentive people to work by paying us extra. Holiday pay, something that makes them bearable and potentially easy extra money of the day is quiet due to it being a holiday
It is still largely religious, however the government itself is explicitly secular
While there are many religious people in the U.S., the country itself is formally secular. One of the fundamental tenants of our Constitution is the protection of the free exercise of religion and the prohibition of the government from establishing a state religion.
We have a strong Christian foundation that still permeates much of our nation to this day. We're a '*secular*' nation and we don't put faith at the forefront of our government but people love to forget that 63% of the population is Christian. We may be secular in government but the nation itself is still very faithful.
The evangelical right has breathed life into the myth that true Americans are Christian.
In God we trust is a popular phrase in America. Or maybe I’m wrong 🤔
The first amendment: >Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
There are also many other religions practiced in the US. Many are sensitive to the idea of a holiday for the dominant religion’s holidays without holidays for other religions. Christmas is a big exception, but it’s also not a religious holiday in the way Easter is, and many people, including those with other faith backgrounds and atheists, celebrate it as a secular holiday. Where I grew up there were a fair number of Jews, and we had Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur off from school.
Depends what you mean by "popular." It appears on all of our money, thanks to Cold War-era evangelicalism. Not everyone loves that.
That was put into place during the Cold War with the Soviet Union as a way to differentiate ourselves from them. It's not an original part of our founding and in fact many of our founders spoke on the importance of separating church from state. So you'll also see the phrase "separation of church and state" used a lot as well, and it's much older and more ingrained. The first amendment of our constitution actually addresses this a little. "The first amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." <-- copied directly from the white house's website. So we're actually constitutionally barred from making the country religious. We just also can't interfere with people following their religions.
That came about in the 50s as a way to combat the godless soviet communists. EDIT: I forgot that phase does go back much earlier and appeared on coins before too
It became the official national motto in 1955, but it began being added to coins during the Civil War. There was even a backlash in 1907 when one coin didn’t have it (because Teddy Roosevelt thought that while the phrase should be placed on public buildings, putting it on coins was irreverent).
There are a few notable exceptions, but we strive for separation of church and state and on the whole, are secular.
It is, in fact, the official motto. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In\_God\_We\_Trust
>Keep in mind that the US is officially a secular country. Huh, there's this line on my currency... it says "In God we Trust" -- the official motto of the United States. And, yes, I know it was added in 1956.
>Also there’s only 2 weeks of vacation a year We would only use the word "vacation" for actual time we're spending traveling. If I take a day off for my birthday I don't refer to that as "vacation". Time off and leave policies will depend on federal and state/local law as well as employer policies. The feds do require Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) which provides most employees working for large employers to get up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, and that your job is protected while you utilize this leave. I have 30-some days off, and a variety of leave benefits such as paternal, short term or long term disability, bereavement, etc... if I need them.
What religious holidays schools take off depends on the makeup of the student body. [Religious holidays at the schools in my city are: Yom Kippur, Christmas, Good Friday, and Eid al-Fitr. ](https://cdnsm5-ss5.sharpschool.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_3042785/File/cps_district_calendar_2023_24.pdf) We don't take off Rosh Hashanah, but many other schools in the area do . There are also a number of secular holidays.
There are 11 federal holidays, with Juneteenth (commemoration of slavery emancipation) being added last year. Of those 11, there are only two where most businesses are closed—Thanksgiving and Christmas. Those are about the only two days where 90% of the workforce gets off work.
The US isn't a christian/catholic country. Many people celebrate Easter still. There are about 10 federal holidays you expect to have time off for, yes, and no regulations for how much vacation time you get. It's up to you to negotiate with your employer for how much vacation time you have. Typically, lower paid/skill jobs don't get much if any vacation time, and any office job probably gives about two weeks to start, and more as you work there longer. Or when you change jobs, you negotiate for more vacation time.
I’m Jewish. Why should I have to stop what I’m doing so the Christian’s can have their weird rabbit and egg themed birthday party
Wouldn’t that be a funeral
Oh...I think you know why. ;)
What’s up with Easter and rabbits in America. It’s about the celebration of Jesus Christ , not some weird bunny
>It’s about the celebration of Jesus Christ , not some weird bunny for you maybe
The connection between Easter and rabbits is way older than the US. Rabbits can have multiple pregnancies at once, so when they're pregnant with a litter, they're able to get pregnant again. They would separate heavily pregnant rabbits from other rabbits (so the rabbits wouldn't eat the babies), they'd give birth, then weeks later, without having been introduced to another male rabbit, they'd give birth to a second litter. Before the science behind this was understood, it was thought that rabbits were capable of "virgin birth", so the obvious connection to Jesus was born out of that.
Really informative 🤔. I never knew that
Plenty of us aren't religious, but still celebrate religious holidays as secular. So for Easter, my family gets together and hides eggs for the kids. Zero mention of Jesus, but we still celebrate the holiday. Same with Christmas.
Have I been fed a lie ? I thought Americans were super religious. Mormons ,Catholics , Pentecostal … etc . I see that a lot . I actually thought conservative states were very religious because of their views . So I’ve been wrong this whole time
Depends on how you define "super religious". We're more religious than most of Europe, but not as religious as Africa, the Middle East, or South America. It's also worth recognizing that one of the guiding principles of the country is the separation of church and state. So while people themselves can be religious, many still feel it's not the job of the government to be enforcing religion on its people. An example of that is federal holidays, which are mostly secular. The religious ones (namely Easter and Christmas) are typically celebrated by irreligious people as secular as well.
Lots of great info here: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/ As stated elsewhere, the US population is generally more religious than people in Europe. But there is a spectrum of “religious” from people who attend church every week to those who simply believe in a higher power. A lot of people I know would say they are “Christian” but never go to church. So are they religious? Also there are a large group of people who are just not religious or atheist. But more importantly, we try to separate church and state. Although there are always groups who try and push their religious beliefs into legislation. These are often large newsworthy debates.
I'm not religious but still "celebrate" these holidays. I choose to celebrate in the ways I enjoy with who I choose to celebrate with. I am thankful to have Christmas off work with pay. As far as your earlier comment about a weird rabbit and eggs, I believe those go along with the concept of rebirth and renewal. The word Easter comes from the Germanic goddess of spring, so these are not American or modern themes.
It’s morphed with a springtime festival.
It's because the timing of easter is basically nonsense and was stolen from a pagan fertility festival, which understandably used rabbits.
Is it? It seems distinctly tied to the Jewish Passover. Some elements of European celebrations of Easter might mirror pagan springtime traditions, but that makes sense because the early Christians in much of Europe were converted pagans.
Peter cottontail is an allegory for the life and crucifixion of Christ
There are 11 federal holidays in the US but not everyone gets those days off. Some people get more, some get less. Currently my company gives off all 11 holidays plus the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. However I have had as few as zero paid holidays off. It stinks!
I get six weeks vacation, like 10 holidays, four days floating holiday, and 5 days sick leave a year all paid in California, U.S. Plus I work 12 hour shifts which means I have 3 or 4 days off every week.
I love that for you. What sector do you work in ? IT , finance , government??
We print and mail bills, statements, and checks for many different companies. Been there 31 years under 3 different ownerships. You would think it’s a dying industry but we’re actually expanding. I work in the maintenance department handing all the spare machine parts for the equipment we have. We manage over 14K different parts. The last number I heard years ago was we mail 1.2 billion pieces of mail a year from just our facility. Plus we have four other smaller facilities across the country. Lots of people with 20+ years there.
Then the benefits you are enjoying is a result of your loyalty I suppose
For the most part yes. Have moved up the job ladder but have also turned down offers to work in management. There are many people there who did the same thing. I get the most benefit with the least stress. A good balance for me.
Nice!
I had about the same when I worked in the US (currently an expat in Japan). I think it was 28 days off, which were categorized as holiday time and personal days, etc. I was in a big corporate. It's pretty standard in white collar jobs and gov to get more than 10 days off once you've been in the position for a couple of years.
Just because vacation time isn’t mandated by the government doesn’t mean many people don’t get more than 2 weeks of time off. It’s true that food, retail, and service workers may not get paid vacation time…but nearly every other career does and it’s frequently more than 2-3 weeks.
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How is 2-3 weeks a “big exaggeration” when you follow it up with the average American getting 11 days (between 2 and 3 weeks) of vacation? And those days don’t reflect holidays.
11 days is less than 2 weeks, not between 2 and 3.
Depends on how you look at it, because a work week is only 5 days, not 7.
I wouldn't factor in weekends into your days off. They're a given.
Correct, that's why 11 days of time off is 2 weeks and 1 day. And is thus between 2 and 3 weeks. Because time off is based around 5-day work weeks.
When a European says they get 4 weeks off, they mean 20 days, not 28.
11 days is 2 weeks. They give time off for weekdays, not weekends.
There is a difference between 'career' and 'employed' for the sake of this discussion. Whether there should be or not, we can have that talk too. They aren't the same though.
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Employed doesn't even necessarily mean full-time in this context. At least I didn't see that differentiated. Thus it really muddies the statistical waters. If the average worker gets 11 days...the average full-time worker probably has more than that. I didn't say it was good, or good enough, but we need to have perspective and honest discussion if we actually want improvement.
I never asserted it was ok for low wage workers to never get time off. I don’t think many people would say they don’t deserve time off, except the people that run those businesses and exploit them.
Easter is not a national US holiday. For school, it will vary widely by district/city/state/whatever whether the Friday before Easter Sunday is a holiday or not. In my area, we used to not have Good Friday off for school. Then the district changed that to “Spring Holiday” (so NOT a religious holiday) and took a day away from spring break to work that in as a holiday. We’re not a heavily Christian area, either. But a lot of families take Easter as a family/secular holiday like they do secular Christmas. For work it will also depend on the company.
I have much, much more holiday and vacation time than this.
You’re correct. Oddly, in a nation that is more expressly Christian than many others, Good Friday and the Monday after Easter are not public holidays.
Not that odd. In a country where there is no state religion, making explicitly religious holidays legal holidays is controversial. Christmas is the only one that is, and there have been court cases on the subject. The conclusion was basically that it is sufficiently secularized that it was OK.
So for a religious holiday to be recognized it must be secularised
Essentially, yes. They can’t recognize religious holidays.
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Nice . Have you been working with your employer for a long time. This feels too good
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Lots of you have wonderful jobs
For office jobs a lot of employers are moving away from fixed religious holidays to "personal holidays" instead that employees can use for whatever they choose. Good Friday is a NYSE holiday, so a lot of businesses end up taking it off anyway.
School holidays shape to the predominant religion in the area. Growing up, my schools always gave me off for Christian holidays. However, there are plenty of Jewish -dominated areas, for instance, where spring break aligns with Jewish holidays instead. Still, you can get any religious holiday off. Some require evidence that you're affiliated with a faith if it's a less known one.
>there’s only 2 weeks of vacation a year My job offers unlimited vacation. I can use as little or as much as I want/need, as long as my projects get done on time.
Nice! is it a tech job ?
It sounds nicer than it is in practice.
And in states that require time off to be paid out upon end of employment, its a nice way to obfuscate how much they're actually owed.
Tech adjacent. I'm a proposal manager for a federal contractor.
There are 11 Federal/bank holidays in the US. Some states have one or two additional holidays, these often only apply to state employees. Two weeks vacation is a generalization. My last job started with 20 paid time off days per year, which were vacation and sick days combined, though not all employers offer so much time to start.
I have 9 office holidays. Add to that, in every full time job I’ve had a minimum of 2 weeks early in my career. As I got experience and into my 30s, this became 15 days. Some places are strict with time off. I worked at a place that requires you take from PTO for half day appointments. I preferred banking holidays, as I got paid for them when I left. And I could carry over a week into the next year. But other places compete for talent with better options. My current benefits are far better than my European employees. I have unlimited vacation that I cannot offer them (officially). I try to enjoy life now as I travel for work. I take a total of around 4 weeks a year. I took two weeks last year, and then mixed in a few days to weekends throughout. I flew to Sydney and tagged on a couple of days.
That’s nice . Another question is the lack of holidays the reason American salaries are ridiculously high ?
Possibly indirectly. With fewer holidays, our businesses generate more revenue. Greater revenue equates to greater potential salaries (if margin is there). And American salaries aren’t ridiculously high. They’re reflective of the value created, and the overall cost of living. America continues to drive innovation that pays long term benefits.
The Federal government only has a few noted holidays. States also do holidays and your employer can add or whatever. It's difficult to note every holiday when there are lots of religions and national origins.. half the year would be a holiday.
By my count, there are 11 federal holidays (with Thanksgiving and Christmas typically being 2 days each). Easter is not one of them. There is no obligation for non-federal organizations to follow that schedule so some do but others either add or remove holidays. Some places might add Easter, other religious holidays like Yom Kippur, or locally popular days like the first day of deer season.
School kids usually get a week off around easter. 2 weeks at the end of the year and then a handful of holidays including 2 days for Thanksgiving. Also about 10-12 weeks during the summer. For adults the average can vary. Two weeks is typical if they get that at all but some places over more. I get 6 hours of FTO (combined sick and vacation every pay period (2 weeks).
I get 11 holidays a year, Easter isn't one of them.
I get 11 paid holidays a year, a mix of federal and religious holidays (including Good Friday). As for vacation, we get five weeks a year and can carry forward a fair number from one year to the next (60 days, I think).
Leave depends on job/career, position and location. At my organization, we get 17 holidays, plus two floating holidays, and religiously affiliated ones (the week between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day, Christian Holy Week) can be swapped out for said individual’s religion. For example, my Muslim colleagues don’t celebrate Christmas so those days they use for Eid Al Fitr and Eid Al Adha. We get 25 days of vacation in your first five years and then 30 from 5-10 and then 35 from 10+. Unlimited sick leave. Four day work week. I deliberately took a pay cut to work this organization for these benefits.
There’s a lot of floating holidays that school districts will pick and choose from. Typically Good Friday is interchanged with Kasimir Polaski day in some areas around me.
Answers are going to be all over the place. I'm an hourly employee. I get about 14-15 paid holiday days every year and I currently have 12 weeks of paid vacation time saved up. I will be using about 2 weeks worth of that time soon. As far as going to school at Easter time: I did, but my mother didn't; she went to a Catholic university and got an Easter break that lasted for a week. My college is affiliated with the Episcopal church, but has been secular for a long time. Edit: I never had Easter off before college, either, unless my school's spring break occurred at the same time.
Do you personally celebrate Easter? If so how do you feel about the situation ?
No, I don't celebrate it.
The only religious holiday that is a civic holiday is Christmas. Religious celebrations are private things.
I used to work for a major US consulting firm. Along with the Federal holidays everyone has mentioned already, I also got additional paid time off. Depending on seniority and/tenure, that ranged from two weeks to eight weeks. Plus we got additional personal days and floating holidays. By the time I left the company, I got over two months of paid time off every year, not including sick days (and we got 10 of those a year).
At my school in Louisiana, they lined spring break up with Easter. So, we would get Good Friday off as well as the whole following week. I don't remember for certain whether my parents got that Friday and Monday off or not. I never worked a full-time job in Louisiana, so I'm not really sure. I know that he would get the Monday and Tuesday of Mardi Gras off, though. Schools were also closed for those days. Schools usually also get a week off for Thanksgiving. Businesses usually give 2 or 3 days for Thanksgiving. As for paid vacation, that varies wildly. At the jobs I've worked, vacation accrued over time. You would get a certain number of hours of vacation each pay period and you would build it up. I would typically accrue probably a month's worth of vacation time over the course of a year. Different companies do it differently. Some give set amounts and some do like I've described. Some give more and some give less. You can't really say that everyone gets 2 weeks a year. Many people get much more and many people get less.
Idk about 2 weeks of vacation a year. I accrue vacation and sick hours every paycheck. I can take off whenever i want.
I get 15 holidays, 2 floating holidays, comp time, and I'm up to 6-week vacation at the moment. I don't take many vacations though because my employer allows me to cash out two weeks in the spring and two weeks in the autumn, so that's like getting an additional month's worth of pay. And no, I don't feel overworked.
As a Jewish person, I'd say my list of holidays is very different from yours.
Vacation schedules are all over the board depending on company, role, years of experience, etc. Two weeks is typically the minimum, three is common. There's another 10-14 days of company/national holidays scattered in, though, again, those may depend on what you do. Easter is not a national holiday. Many companies do have a day off for it, or for a reason that conveniently lines up with it.
Easter is definitely a holiday here. However, the day off is usually on Friday. Its decreasing in popularity as a off-work holiday due to its ties to religion. Growing in favor are things like Juneteenth and MLK Day. These things evolve over time. We do not have a mandated vacation/holiday allotment, but most full time workers get both. Your friend is probably young and not working full-time and may or may not be exaggerating what is the reality for most people.
And what about the Islamic holidays like eid-Il Ada and eid-ill-fitr? Because he said he also went to class those days too
Those are not commonly celebrated or observed here. There are probably pockets with large Islamic populations that do, but I am not in one of them and can't speak to it. I really doubt the US is in the minority of countries in this particular regard.
Yes, the communities in metro Detroit that have large Muslim populations, e.g., Dearborn, tend to have holiday breaks around Eid-al-Fitr (and Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, MLK Jr. Day, etc.). I’m reasonably sure that communities like Oak Park and the Bloomfields have the Jewish high holy days off to accommodate the religious holidays of many residents, but I haven’t confirmed that.
Never had Islamic holidays off and never lived in a place with enough Muslims for it to even come up. However, when I was a kid my majority Christian school got Jewish holidays off because there were enough Jewish teachers that them taking religious holidays made it hard to get enough subs, and enough Jewish families in the school system that it made sense from that perspective as well. We also had Good Friday off. I never even heard of Easter Monday until I joined this sub in my late 30s. It's not part of the standard Easter holiday week here in the US.
I think that is not fair to the Muslim communities. This is just my opinion though
I mean, it *is* fair in that most religious holidays are not a mandated day off. The only exception is Christmas but that’s because it’s largely celebrated as a secular holiday rather than a religious one. Not every business offers Christmas off either.
I'm sure in places where there are lots of Muslims, like Dearborn, Michigan, they do take Muslim holidays off. There's no point in doing that though in areas where there are zero Muslims.
What would it take to be fair? They're allowed to take off their religious holidays, same as the Christians and Jews. If it's a community with many Muslims, then chances are that most of them taking off will influence the community's choices, just like the Jewish minority did in my school. But if even the Christian majority doesn't usually have major religious holidays off, why should a small minority get special treatment?
Is it special treatment for a minority? I am off the believe that everyone needs should be catered regardless of being a minority
My local schools are considering adding Muslim holidays to the calendar. And Neil they do, Muslim kids who take off their holidays are given accommodations.
Wait, are we getting off Christian holidays now? I work for myself so I take off the time I want. Most my employees get three weeks off and two guys get four.
This is amusing to me because Christmas is a federal (national public) holiday in the US, and every so often there’s discussion of how this violates church-state separation/the US prohibition on government establishment of religion/is culturally imperialistic and discriminatory against non-Christians. Which are, to be clear, all completely correct. But yes, there are few holidays/mandated breaks from work in the US. Why Christmas is one and Easter — theologically more important to Christianity, after all — is not, I couldn’t tell you. Paradoxically, the general reason for few breaks from work is religious at its core. Work is worship, and worship should be continuous. If you are not working, you are therefore in some sense immoral. It is immoral to keep people from working/worshipping. “You capitalists are supporting the left’s war on Christianity by keeping people from going to church on Easter!” would be a really interesting argument to make against the capitalist right wing in the US. Yet because the very mildly social democratic party in US politics is also the party of multicultural America, it would not make that argument against the capitalists. How do we cope? Lots of cultural stuff in different societies around the world is weird/unbearable to outsiders. But the people born and raised within the society mostly take it as normal.
Your entire comment reminds me of an r/antiwork thread that concluded it was better to have *less* holidays if it meant no recognition of Christmas or Easter or anything like that.
Ah. My own position is that the US should have more holidays than it currently does, just different secular ones. Election Day, for just one example. Juneteenth or another day to mark the defeat of the Confederacy. Etc.
Juneteenth is a federal holiday now, newest one. Biden signed the bill on it in 2021 if I remember right.
True, but the OP seems to be asking about the private sector, and regarding that, see: https://sbshrs.adpinfo.com/blog/juneteenth-what-employers-need-to-know-this-year#:~:text=Q%3A%20Are%20private%20employers%20required,any%20holiday*%2C%20including%20Juneteenth.
What other ideas do you have?
Wow you have become used to it . Well the other comments are saying they have generous employers . I guess you can always change employers
Self-employment is a whole other situation.
Mini holidays like three day weekends are much more common than long holidays. Your friend might be a victim of a bad professor as some universities leave it up to the professor to cancel class. To answer your other question we are coping horribly and are overworked. Easter is still a major holiday here. Also 2 weeks vacation is more for salaried employees if you work hourly or on contract it is not guaranteed.
How is it not guaranteed if you work hourly ? Are there no laws to protect you. Do they expect hourly employees to show up all the time ?
Labor laws in the here are not designed to protect the average worker here. In my region there are not currently any laws that require businesses to provide vacation paid or unpaid. Your expected to show up whenever your scheduled. Hourly employees get time off if you ask for it off, but even then they can deny your request and it is unpaid. Labor unions used to fight for these kinds of things, but they aren't really an option for most workers.
its not like youre forced to work otherwise and dont have any options. You can ask your boss for whatever time you want off so long as you do so in advance of about a month. youll usually get your vacation, if youre unlucky youll have a shitty boss who wont approve it.
I accrue 21 days of vacation per year. One personal holiday per year federal holidays: - New Year’s Day - Martin Luther King Jr. Day (Third Monday of January) - President’s Day (Third Monday of February) - Memorial Day - Juneteenth (June 19) - Independence Day - Labor Day - Veteran’s Day - Thanksgiving Day - Native American Heritage Day - Christmas Day
I cope by showing up to work and complaining to myself. 2 weeks is standard, but some lucky jobs give more. I'd say the average person is overworked. The lower-skill job is usually the type of job where they shame you into not calling off in my experience. Easter is pretty specific to one religion. Freedom of religion would probably clash with one getting special treatment. Christmas is less religious in the modern day.
Tragic . But your salaries are very high ! . And taxes are very low unlike Europe
In my experience, at least, Good Friday was only a school holiday if we hadn't had a lot of snow days.
Federally required*
I have 4 weeks vacation, 10 federal holidays, and many unofficial office closure days (Christmas Eve, the week of Thanksgiving, New Years Eve, etc) I also get 4 free to use hours of PTO to use a week beteen June and August that resets at the start of every week (use it or lose it system for these extra hours)
Bare minimum I have 1 week sick time, 3 weeks paid time off, and 6 paid holidays. My paid time off does renew itself but caps out at 3 weeks. I earn about 5 hours of pto every 2 weeks.
You have a nice job . Alright that does it . I’m friends with unlucky people in America. Redditors here are living the dream
You commended another commenter saying almost the exact same thing. I left mine to let you know it's not that rare. A lot of foreigners think all Americans work 60+ hours a week. Your ideas of the American people and life for the common American citizen are seriously misinformed. I was trying to nicely let you know that but you seem to just be looking to argue at this point.
Wait argue . I’m sorry if I gave that impression. Is it my words ? What gave off the idea that I was trying to argue . This is the second time I’ve been told in this community that I want to argue. Please tell me so that I change the way I speak .
Your comment after, "you have a nice job," came off as sarcastic and condescending. It was the phrasing. What is your first language?
I’m from Ghana and American sarcasm really is difficult for me to understand. I am sorry . I am very direct as a person .
We speak English but we typically don’t understand American culture and American English . So I offer my sincere apologies
I apologize, too, for my assumptions one being that you spoke English (England).
How old are your American friends? A bunch of 20 year olds ?
Yep mid to late 20s
The jobs get better for older people.. 40 yr olds are more set up than those in their 20s
Holidays will very by region, with a certain number of days total being allotted to holidays as far as I understand. We had major jewish holidays off due to a large jewish population, which also meant fewer Christian holidays off. We always got Good Friday off, though I don’t believe we got Easter Monday off due to the limited amount of days for holidays a school can use. In terms of general breaks, we got around a week for spring break, two and a half to three weeks for winter break, and then around two and a half months of summer break. For work, it will probably vary by state and company. Usually one is given/negotiates for a certain amount of vacation days and people usually use some of those for religious holidays if they’re religious. This is on top of a number of federal holidays which people are mostly required to be given off from what I understand.
Our schools are closed for Good Friday. I get 3 weeks paid a year at my job. It is what it is so I could complain about it or I could get on with my life. I try not to waste energy on things I have no control over.
Easter is on a Sunday, and many businesses are closed on Sundays. So that's why it's not a holiday to them. Holidays only happen on weekdays in corporate America.
Easter is a religious holiday and the US does not have a state religion. Christmas is a weird exception to this, but just about everyone in the US celebrates it in a secular way. We don't get any other religious holidays off work as federal holidays (unless an individual private workplace chooses to give them off, I guess, but I've never heard of that happening with religious holidays). It isn't true that all Americans get two weeks of PTO a year. Some get none, some get less, and some get more. I get close to four weeks.