On my recent visit back home to Australia we were given a 2008 calendar. It now adorns the wall of our bathroom, and apart from some amateurish Photoshop editing performed on the images it presents, it is quite attractive. Yesterday as I sat taking care of that which requires taking of, I glanced at the Australian and New Zealand public holidays that are noted on this calendar’s January page. Imagine my bemusement when I look at January 2, and read this, “Day after New Years day (NZ).” What on earth? New Zealand has a public holiday not only on ‘hangover day’ on January 1, but also on January 2? Why? Who on earth came up with that idea? I wanted to be sure this was not just a random event, so I explored the NZ government’s pages for an answer which I found here. It indeed appears that to New Zealanders, January 2 is such a significant date on their calendar, that all unnecessary labor must cease for those 24 hours. A cursory look for a discussion of that significance leads to nothing. Is it simply that people need a second day to get over their party hangover? Is the breaking in of a new year, such a nation stopping event that it necessitates the mandating of two whole days of rest? Could it be that on that day when he was given the task of choosing a new public holiday, some bureaucrat named Andy was more eager to get to the local bar to watch the cricket on some cheap overhead tv?
“…arhhh lets see… righty-ho, January 2 is free. What should we call it?… That’s it… ‘The Day After New Years Day’. Seeya Joan, I’m off to the “Newton”.
How else did it get that name? At least ‘Boxing day’ was not called, “The Day After Christmas Day”. Who on earth let that name get through? Why not call it, “Get Out of the Office Some More Day’, or ‘Official Playing Hooky Day’, or ‘Recovery Day’, or ‘Clean Up The House After The Guests Left Day’? To me the day doesn’t have a name, it just tells me that Kiwis are too lazy. Too lazy to go to work, and too lazy to care about naming one of the eleven publicly mandated rest days.
The problem with naming the the ‘Day AFTER New Years Day’, is that it makes for nonsensical turn of events. Take 2006 for instance. January 1 fell on a Sunday. The laws for public holidays meant that January 3 became ‘New Years Day’ and January 2 was ‘The Day AFTER New Years Day’. Only in New Zealand does January 2 come after January 3! Okay, I know January 1 is still New Years Day, but it still amuses me.
More seriously though, let’s consider for a moment that the government was trying to resolve a problem that exists around that time of year. That is that people having a day off from work when out of town guests are visiting, or the kids are off from school, like to make the most of the occasion, and will take an additional day off on January 2. Wouldn’t it actually increase the rate of people taking a third day off? Especially in years when January 1 and 2 land either Tuesday/Wednesday, or Wednesday/Thursday, the temptation to take Monday-December 31, or Friday-January 3 in addition becomes very tempting. I wonder how many businesses saw an increase of ’sick day’ calls this year when December 31 was a Monday. This would be on top of the previous weeks Christmas Eve Monday, which would more then likely have seen a bump in the number of ‘hooky’ days. I wonder how many businesses this season, mandated vacation time for their employees by putting up their ‘Closed for Business’ sign on Friday December 21 until Monday January 7.
Those kiwis have always been a little quirky.
