Americans have their holidays in perspective
January 2, 2005
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
''Are you working over Christmas?'' I asked the waitress at my local diner on Thursday, Dec. 23.
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 the United States, ''over Christmas'' means Dec. 25. 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.
So Christmas 2004 is over over here, but over there they're just getting into their stride. In America, even with separation of church and state, the Christmas holiday is what it says: a holiday for 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 I was sent this year that tomorrow -- Monday, Jan. 3, 2005 -- is a public holiday throughout the British Isles -- the Morning After The Morning After The Morning After Hogmanay? -- and the lucky Scots get Tuesday, Jan. 4, 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.
I've spent Christmas on both sides of the pond and, on the whole, I prefer the intensity of the American version: the big buildup, nonstop seasonal favorites on the radio between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, and then at midnight on Dec. 25, it all stops, and Dec. 26 is a perfectly normal day. Whereas the last Christmas I spent in rural England is as near as I hope I ever get to experiencing my own hostage crisis. ''Is it Christmas Bank Holiday Thursday yet?'' ''No, it's still Boxing Day. Have another cold turkey sandwich and some stale punch.'' I've nothing against a three-week Christmas in principle, but there doesn't seem to be enough to fill it up.
The French and Germans, who average 40 days vacation a year, assume the reason Americans don't take holidays is because they don't get them. In fact, it's very hard persuading Americans to take the ones they do get. In rural states, most federal holidays -- Presidents Day, Martin Luther King Day, etc. -- go unobserved except by banks and government agencies. It was all I could do to persuade my assistant not to come in on Christmas Day -- ''just for a couple of hours in the morning in case there's anything urgent,'' she says pleadingly.
''There won't be anything urgent,'' I scoff.
''What about all that European research you wanted me to chase up?''
''Those deadbeats won't be back in the office till the week before Valentine's Day.'' Since lunchtime on Dec. 23, every business in Europe has been on an answering machine.
It's true there are those in America who occasionally aspire to Europe's elegant lethargy. In the special Princess Di tribute issue of the New Yorker rushed out by Tina Brown, she offered her own queenlier-than-thou farewell: ''When the news came of her death, my first thoughts were of place and time -- of the wrongness of any royal princess, even a divorced one, contriving to be in that place at that time. In late summer, the Paris of the rich and the titled simply closes down,'' she wrote. ''Paris in August . . .? The fact that she was there at all was discordant, a poignant symbol of a season of panic and flight.''
So not only was the Princess of Wales' death a terrible tragedy, it seems it was also a ghastly social faux pas.
But Paris in August, like London ''over Christmas,'' is in itself a symbol of flight -- flight from work. In 1999, the average ''working'' German worked 1,536 hours a year, the average American 1,976. In the United States, 49 percent of the population is in employment, in France 39 percent. From my strictly anecdotal observation of German acquaintances, the ideal career track seems to be to finish school around 34 and take early retirement at 42. By 2050, the pimply young lad in lederhosen serving you at the charming beer garden will be singlehandedly supporting entire old folks' homes. If tax rates were to be hiked commensurate to the decline in tax base and increase in welfare obligations, there would be no incentive at all to enter the (official) job market. Better to stay at school till 38 and retire at 39. That's why America's richer, and why, though the Europeans preen about their kinder, gentler society, customers of Amazon.com have pledged more money to disaster relief in the Indian Ocean than the French government.
It would require enormous political will to shift the people of Europe. After you've turned citizens into junkies, with government as the pusher, it's very hard to turn them back again, and even harder to get them to quit cold turkey. It's all but impossible in the present Continental political culture. Europe has a psychological investment in longer holidays: The fact that they spell national suicide is less important than that they distinguish Europe from the less enlightened Americans.
Many aspects of European life are, indeed, very pleasant: jobs for life, three-week Yuletides, etc. But they're what the environmental crowd would call ''unsustainable development.'' Despite the best efforts of lethargic Scotsmen, it can't be Christmas all year round |
