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Should the Start of Chinese New Year Be a Federal Holiday?
First time accepted submitter CarlosF writes "Does Lunar New Year belong alongside those other red-letter days? Efforts to recognize Lunar New Year at the state and local level have been afoot for years. In 1994, San Francisco decided to close public schools on Lunar New Year, but this was largely a response to demographic reality rather than political pressure."
start celebrating Mexican holidays as well? They outnumber the Chinese in US.
Lets not start going on that slippery slope.
Having to observe both American *and* Chinese holidays is a bit too much. Mid-Autumn festival, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the solar New Year, and the lunar New Year--and for each one I'm expected to go home and spend time with the parents. If the lunar new year becomes a federal holiday, there goes my last excuse!
Well, we know the answer is no.
The way it should go is exactly the way it will go: if the Chinese population in a given area is large enough that the inhabitants cannot ignore the celebration, they will recognise it. That area can be a county, state or country.
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Shouldn't your question be "should it be a federal holiday in the USA"? It is already in China.
In medieval times the calendar was packed with holidays, about one per week IIRC. Seems like that would've been a good way to blow off some steam, eh? Most of these are only historical curios now. I'd be for bringing those back, or secular equivalents, rather. Starting with Festivus, of course. Feats of Strength!
Yeah. You know what else is useless? Weekends. What's up with that crap. I mean, abolish them, and we could work 7 days a week. Woot!
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
a loanshark an inconceivably large sum of money, and was only able to go about my business and you know, exist, because of the loanshark's continuing goodwill... I'd probably go out of my way to wish him happy birthday when it rolled around.
Just saying.
Trolling slashdot is a time honored tradition.
In 1994, San Francisco decided to close public schools on Lunar New Year, but this was largely a response to demographic reality rather than political pressure.
Which is as it should be, and an indicator that federalism is working just fine, thank you very much. In an area where lots of people want to take the same day off, it's off. Otherwise, it's not. Heck, we could make Nooruz (Persian New Year) a national holiday, but I doubt there's a demand for that anywhere except in certain parts of Los Angeles. It would be nice for the various Slavic and Greek enclaves around the US if their New Year (based on the Julian rather than Gregorian calendar) was a national holiday. We could make Rosh Hashanah a national holiday, along with at least half a dozen different New Year days from India (it depends on the region). Etc. Etc. Etc.
It's one thing to be respectful of minority groups, and for everyone to have the same legal rights regardless of ethnicity, religion, etc. That's as it should be. But it's an entirely-different thing to bend over backwards pretending that there are no minorities. I wouldn't expect to get Christmas off if I lived in China, nor would it be any kind of insult or malign discrimination on China's part if I didn't.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
The argument likely aims at the fact that storming of Bastille was the event that launched chain that resulted in creation of modern democracy, modern Western power structures and Napoleon Code.
The storming of the Bastille happened years after the American Revolution, and unlike the American Revolution, which resulted in (relatively) liberal democracy right away, the French Revolution resulted in the Reign of Terror (hardly a model for democracy), and the re-establishment of monarchy several times (Napoleonic and Bourbon kings and emperors). In fact, the French Revolution scared a lot of other countries from liberalizing and becoming more democratic (see Edmund Burke's writings, for instance)
Also, the Napoleonic Code also has nothing to do with the common law practiced in the US (outside of Louisiana and Puerto Rico to some extent) or other Anglophone liberal democracies.
As soon as the night before is used as an excuse to get drunk by a large portion of the populace, who are then too hung over to go to work on the holiday, it will become an official American day off. New Year's day isn't a holiday because anyone is celebrating the start of a new year.
(dawn till dusk and a bit more, 7 days a week). Instead, you weren't supposed to have sex or any other sort of fun, and instead spend more time praying.
Now we call that "grad school".
Im sure youre a blast to have at parties.
"Stop all of this illogical merrymaking! We should be acting as productive members of society!"
I see no reason to have a statutory holiday dedicated to worshipping the moon.
Yes, the Sun is the one, true God.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Call it "moon day" or whatever, invent some hallmark theme for it, etc.
Whatever you do, don't call it Moonday. We already have one of those every week, and it's a terrible day.
The thing is, the days really do have to be mandatory - otherwise, you get those people who basically live in the office and never use vacation time ruining it for everyone else. They almost never do more work, they're just slower at it (because they're burnt out from never taking any time off, it's a chicken and egg thing I guess). The worst part is that because "butts in seats" is an easily quantifiable metric (significantly easier than, say, "work quality" or "features completed"), managers tend to even encourage that self-destructive behavior.
That's pretty much how the USA got to where it is right now, in fact - we have the worst time off laws of almost any nation, and it's largely because of the ridiculously overblown Protestant "you should either be working, eating or sleeping" work ethic. We would probably get more done as a country if we had more time off.