New Year's Holiday

Coming to the Middle East, I was quite amused with the practice of giving holidays not on the day of the occasion when it fell but shifting it to another day thus getting a long weekend in the bargain. And this morning, there it is this bit of news in the paper saying that the "Civil Service Commission (CSC)" will issue an official statement by tomorrow when the New Year's holiday would be set.

It seems about a couple of years back, the Government had decided that any holidays that fell in the middle of the week would be shifted to the first day of the week. Thursday & Friday being the weekend, it would mean getting the Saturday off. The purpose of it was to have a longer weekend. Now, ever since the official weekend since September was changed to Friday & Saturday, a new directive was brought out to change the holidays falling in the middle of the week to Sunday. This directive is being hotly debated in the parliament again as New Year's Day, 1st of Jan falls on a Tuesday.

The majority of people are against the law of shifting the holiday to the beginning of the week. "Any feast will lose its meaning if it is celebrated a few days later. If these feasts were not important, why would we make a holiday for it, we would just consider it as a normal day. It's not only about the day off, it's also about the celebration. If we celebrate the occasion after a few days, we will forget the occasion," said Jamal, an employee in the private sector.

I too cannot find the sense of shifting the holidays to another day. To celebrate an occasion before or after?! How strange.

The office memo came in this afternoon....for now...for us...1st of Jan has been declared a holiday!