Business scheduling does not just happen. It takes planning. Its cost money.
This year 2013, Christmas occurred on a Wednesday, smack in the middle of a work week. It meant many if most people did not want to concentrate on working. There is shopping and preparation before the holiday. There are returns to make and more shopping to do after the holiday. In The World of Doing Things other than Commerce, it is a complete waste of a week’s work. It is also hard to have a spiritual holiday three days either way from a Sunday.
Halloween can come on any day of the week and thus disrupts business scheduling in its own way.
Thanksgiving is a little better always coming on the last Thursday of November – but why on Thursday in November?
Christmas can come any day of the week and thus disrupts business scheduling on a big scale. At Christmas time 2013, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas was rather shorter than usual and caused a number of problems, notably a foul up in UPS and FedEx that caused them to deliver numerous packages scheduled for before Christmas delivery after Christmas.
The time has come to legislate the new Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Halloween should always come on the last Friday. The last Friday should be the Halloween party night and the Saturday next should be the Trick or Treating Night. This holiday should always occur on a weekend.
Rescheduling Thanksgiving for business purposes has a long, distinguished history. According to an entry in Wikipedia:
“On December 26, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a joint resolution of Congress changing the national Thanksgiving Day from the last Thursday in November to the fourth Thursday. Two years earlier, Roosevelt had used a presidential proclamation to try to achieve this change, reasoning that earlier celebration of the holiday would give the country an economic boost.”
In the 21st Century, Thanksgiving should be the third Friday. Thus – we will have three days of work, maybe four depending on travel plans. The holiday comes at the end of the week. Then, the Christmas shopping season can start on Black Saturday. The holiday is also two days from a Sunday for the celebration of the spiritual aspects of Thanksgiving.
In the 21st Century, Christmas should be a movable feast like Easter. We know that the Christmas celebration on 25 December does not reflect reality on the date of Jesus’s birth. The scripture evidence would suggest a spring birth date. Christ’s mass got moved to 25 December for symbolic purposes. 25 December came after the Winter Solstice, so it had natural light and darkness symbolism. Ancients co-opted old pagan Roman midwinter festivals called 'Saturnalia' and 'Dies Natalis Solis Invicti.’ They took place in December around this date — so it was a time when people already celebrated things.
In the 21st Century, Christmas should be celebrated on the fourth Sunday of December. This would then emphasize the spiritual nature of the holiday. The official federal secular American Commercial Wintertime Festival holiday should be celebrated the next Monday. Therefore, the last shopping day would always fall on a Saturday; the day off would always occur at the first of a week. The big after Christmas shopping day would always be on a Tuesday and business would have four work days.
Only one exception in this plan: These particular dates should never fall on a January 1.
Calendaring business is neither easy nor cheap, but this plan would somewhat uncomplicate three holidays almost in a row in as many months. The next step would be to figure out how to de-emphasize commerce profit margins from the 62 days of the American Commercial Wintertime Festival and spread them out thorough the buying year.
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