RIP Great Prayer Day… now another holiday is under attack

The Danish Parliament voted earlier this week to abolish Great Prayer Day as a public holiday – a day off that Denmark has had for around 350 years.

Now Copenhageners may risk losing another public holiday following the news that the city’s employment and integration mayor, Jens-Kristian Lütken, has proposed cutting May 1 (Labour Day) as a public holiday.

Ninety years and counting
Since 1933, school children and public employees in Denmark’s largest municipality have had May 1 off, something that Lütken wants to change.

“Keeping a political holiday is something that we consider to be a relic of the past,” This is what Lütken tells TV2 News.

Instead, Lütken and his party Venstre want parents and schools to jointly decide whether a holiday can be held on another day.

READ ALSO: Bun in the oven: The government has set the timer to abolish the Great Prayer Day public holiday this afternoon

It is unlikely to attract support
But that idea has attracted particularly harsh criticism from the red bloc parties in the city. And given that the red bloc traditionally dominates policy-making in the capital, there is little hope that Lütken’s proposal will materialize.

“Copenhagen is the oldest of all municipalities, and it is here that the labor movement was born.” This is what Knud Holt Nielsen, local politician for Enhedslisten, tells TV2 News.

“Taking time off and participating in May Day events is a long and good Copenhagen tradition that all children and parents know. It is a bad proposal that we will vote against.”

Crucial meeting tonight
A school and parent organization, Skole og Forældre, has also shot down the idea, and the proposal is expected to be voted down at a town hall meeting tonight.

Copenhagen is actually one of the relatively few municipalities in the Capital Region where May 1 – International Workers’ Day – is a mandatory day off at schools.

Of the 34 municipalities in the capital area, only 11 have time off. The same can actually only be said about 14 of Denmark’s 98 municipalities.

READ ALSO: Mayday! Remembering the terror spread by the Gladsaxe bomber in 1978

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Source: The Nordic Page