Bank Holidays in England

Today, the 1st of May, is yet another UK Bank Holiday. If you're like me, a novice to British customs and eager to learn as much as one can about it, you'd wonder why they're called bank holidays at all. (Back home, for instance, they're simply called non-working holidays.)

So I googled it and came up with the following explanation from Take Our Word For It at http://www.takeourword.com/TOW135/page2.html. It says:

"What is a bank holiday?
The term started out referring to days when banks (in the U.K.) were closed so that bank employees could have a holiday. Before 1834, banks observed 33 days a year as bank holidays, and these were mostly saints' days and the typical church holidays like Christmas and Easter. In 1834, however, bank workers had most of those taken away such that the only holidays left were Good Friday, May 1st, November 1st, and Christmas Day. Yet, someone felt for the poor bank workers, so that in 1871, Sir John Lubbock's Act was passed, naming the following as bank holidays in England and Ireland: Easter Monday, Whit Monday, the first Monday in August, and Boxing Day (December 26). In Scotland they got New Year's Day, May Day, the first Monday in August, and Christmas Day. These holidays came to be appropriated by non-bank workers, but the term had already stuck. So, no matter for whom one works, one gets bank holidays."

I like the fact, though, that all UK bank holidays (there's one at the start of each season of the year, by the way) fall on a Monday, resulting in long weekends for family outings, tours, holidays, etc.

As for me, I like bank holiday Mondays because it's a compromise solution to a problem I've long grappled with: how to recover from weekends gracefully. Weekends are always so busy. I always ask why God didn't give us an extra day between Sunday and Monday so we could really rest and get ready for the new week. So bank holiday Mondays are a godsend, a welcome treat for me, because we get to have O with us for an extra day, and we can have an excuse to just hang out in the house and do absolutely nothing, all together as a happy, rested family. :)

And I like May, especially, because there's a bank holiday both at the start and at the end of the month!

Three cheers for bank holidays!!! Hip, hip, hooray!!!