Colm O'Regan: Here's my pitch for the new Bank Holiday - Hump Monday
Pic: Roger Kenny
Bank Holiday: When we commemorate the role banks have played in Irish society in recent years by going on an Absolute Mad One and spending the next while paying for it.
When should this new pandemic bonus holiday be? Fine Gael have suggested a Thanksgiving one on November 29th. I can see why someone thought that. It’s soon, it’s spendy, it’s American. And America loves us, don’t they? Something, something, Biden, something, something, Mayo For Sam, something. But there has been a backlash against that.
A lot of people think St Brigid’s Day would be a candidate. Pre-Christian goddess or superstar saint depending on your point of view. Patron saint of many things including dairy workers, poets and fugitives. That used to be nearly the whole population before the IFSC was opened. What could go wrong? But I worry it will ruin St Brigid’s Day.
If St Patrick's Day is anything to go by, St Brigid will become commercialised. Her message lost. Underpaid workforces across the Global South will be making shite plastic Brigid's Crosses for sale on Wish and Ali Express. There will be some of the coldest parades known to man. People will use it as an excuse to drink (and grab land in Kildare with their magic cloaks).
St Brigid’s Day works because it’s not an opportunity for ‘Ireland Inc’ to market itself abroad. There isn’t a rush to get the rushes. It’s a lovely understated day run mainly by primary school teachers and no one gets a hangover.
From March to June is rich in holidays. They come so often, they feel wasted. We’re not getting the value out of them. St Patrick’s Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, May, June. A meal with too many courses. And since we became more secular, there is not as many Stations of the Cross to keep us on the straight and narrow.
The longest gap without a holiday is from the first Monday in August to the last Monday in October, nearly three months. But we don’t really notice that because we are still topped up on Vitamin D and saying “actually we prefer Autumn”. Also, after the summer, what we really want is to spend less time with family, not more.
Sure, October to late December could do with a handy extra day for Christmas preparation but if we’re truly honest with ourselves, we’ve already mentally switched off around November 15th anyway. It’s just shopping online while at work and school night-drinking starts even before the Toy Show so to formalise it seems wasteful.
So, back to the Dark Times – January 3 up to St Patrick’s Day. Any one of ten grim Mondays are candidates. You could argue for Blue Monday, the third Monday in January. According to a mocky-yah mathematical formula, it’s the most depressing day of the year.
But that was a marketing wheeze dreamt up by a travel company to get people to book holidays and the media, especially lifestyle columnists who were looking for something to write about on a Monday, fell for it.
Instead, I’m nominating the 8th Monday of the year. Hump Monday. The first Monday after St Valentine's day but despite the name, nothing to do with romance. A day to nudge you into the Spring. Do what you want! Go somewhere? For singles, a mid-winter city break that’s cheaper than the rush the previous weekend. For couples a chance to see other people.
Or stay where you are. Your only goal is a lie-in, a long breakfast, maybe watch Jake and the Fatman on Saorview before noon. Would it be a success? You can bank on it.
