There are plenty of holidays – you should abolish one (opinion)

On some holidays we can stay at home – and don’t even know exactly why. Ascension Day and Whit Monday. According to a YouGov survey, 55 percent of people in West Germany and 62 percent in East Germany have no idea what Pentecost is. Just five percent of Germans visit a Pentecost service. More than “Hurray, long weekend!” Most of them hardly think of the “birthday of the church”.

Nevertheless, politics sacrifices an entire working day for Whit Monday every year. Why actually? The author, a practicing Catholic. The Whit Monday could be used much more substantial.

Stiring on holidays such as Ascension Day or Pentecost, triggers with many snaps. Every nation, it is said, needs it for family and relaxation. That may have been right earlier when people hardly had time for themselves. At the beginning of the Weimar Republic in 1918, they worked for 48 hours on six days of the week, and in addition the way to work stole hours.

But around 60 years ago, the unions implemented the five-day week with 40 working hours. One could say: With the slogan “Saturdays belong to Vati Mir”, they won an additional 52 family holidays a year. Today, according to Eurostat, Germans only work on average 34.8 hours per week, less than the EU average (37 hours) and discuss a four-day week.

Why actually? Because the leisure is also more and more stressful, as the “Leisure Monitor” of the Foundation for Future Questions shows. Little indicates that they take care of family or strengthening in their free time. The top five of the most popular timeline, even at Pentecost: 1. use internet. 2. Television. 3. Listen to music. 4. Computer, laptop, tablet. 5. Play with your smartphone, surf, chat.

Why don’t this burden take them and delete Whit Monday? This would increase the annual working time by just 0.4 percent, which would help to work out of the eternal economic crisis. And the shops would still have: 87 percent of the trade turnover still takes place offline. On this day we paid wage tax, social security contributions and VAT to stabilize the welfare state.

But what is even more important: the schools would be open. Today, depending on the state, up to ten percent of the lessons are canceled. Internationally, German students rank in disappointing places. Wouldn’t it be wiser, they learned German, mathematics, natural sciences, languages, philosophy on Whit Monday, instead of the holiday, which means nothing to them in virtual worlds? According to OECD, 15-year-olds are already looking at the smartphone for almost seven hours a day. Incredible.

If you were at school, you may even find out in religious education that Pentecost is also a big festival of global international understanding and against piefing nationalism.

By the way, my colleague Matthias Urbach sees it very differently. You can read his arguments here.