Easter has always been a welcome break, though we never know for sure when it will take place. I have lost count of the number of times I have looked it up beforehand, only to forget and blindly swear that it is early April this year, not later in the month. Really, how many of us reach three and ten and admit to being Easter experts with control of the range?
But when it arrives, it’s an option to recharge: perfect if you’d rather spend most of your holidays in July and July. With the three public holidays, which always come in May, the first half of the year is seen. without succumbing to exhaustion is relatively easy in Denmark.
2022 terrible for holidays
Our new columnist Conrad Molden (see page 23), a British stand-up comedian based in Jutland, believes that we should gather the Easter-related holidays in the same way that Christian V created Great Day of Prayer, the first of the aforementioned holiday weekends, and so let’s take the rest when we choose to take care. After all, they are so randomly selected anyway, so why not?
Better would, however, be more holidays in the second half. Hold the Easter holiday and Ascension Day holiday – most employers assume that you still take a Friday off, so for the price of a day’s holiday you get a four-day weekend – but scrap Big Prayer Day and Pentecost.
Furthermore, if I were an Easter expert (ie probably a lunar scientist), I could calculate the chances that these two days fall on either Workers’ Day (May 1) or Constitution Day (June 5), which are public holidays in Denmark if they fall on a weekday. The killer for Denmark is that there are 35-day intervals, so always falls on the same day, and when they fall on a Sunday, as this year, Christmas Eve / Day and New Year’s Eve fall on the weekend, so there are six fewer holidays right there.
Wild turkey shoots
But let us not pretend that Easter is very meaningful anymore in secular societies like Denmark. Shrove Tuesday, a 40-day fasting period that officially ends the day before Easter Sunday, is held by virtually no one – it would be really surprising if any supermarket chains in Northern Europe include it in their thinking.
Alcohol is also supposed to be banned, but try these three words for size: St Patrick’s Day. In fact, the reason it has become such a pis-up is because the Catholic Church felt the need to give it a reprieve from the strict laws of countries like Ireland and the United States.
Jesus Christ died, of course, and your time could be spent worse than watching ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’, if only to capture John Wayne’s immortal cameo. One thing is for sure: he did not fast on Wild Turkey 101 Bourbon during that recording.
Renew spring in your stride
Nevertheless, there are fine Danish traditions that are worth keeping an eye on (see pages 4 and 16) – making a “gecko letter” is probably the most fun, but perhaps as an observer of one of your children, as there is a fine line between sending one and stalking.
Really, as this special edition confirms, this is a great time to embrace spring. At the time of writing, it is snowing in Copenhagen, but we are convinced that Holy Week, which officially starts with Palm Sunday on April 10, will bring much warmer weather: rising to 10 degrees on Tuesday and steadily rising thereafter.
So get out there and enjoy what the country has to offer. Pages 6-15 are packed with suggestionsand if you want more events added to your selection, check page 20 in the newspaper.
Due to the bad weather lately, Easter is set to be a break in more ways than one.
Source: The Nordic Page