Easter Opening Times

Posted on the 20 April 2014 by Markwadsworth @Mark_Wadsworth

Just going to throw this out there for debate...
Generally, I'm against bank and public holidays because they're a classic case of Bastiat's broken window fallacy - that you get a "free" day off, when in reality, someone has to pay for that and it's going to be the employee, so giving people a public holiday means either that someone gets less money or more realistically that they take a day off at a time when they'd rather not and creates uneven demand for roads, beaches, zoos with all sorts of bad effects.
But I do think that there's something useful about Xmas Day and Boxing Day in that it's a time when families get together, most people participate in it, and so they don't have to muck around booking time off as you have it by default. Two days means one day with his family, one day with hers.
When it comes to Easter I don't think it has that for most people, though. Where Xmas has become a time of merriment, a time for family and pushed out nearly all the Christian aspect and become universal, Easter really is more something for the Christians, who represent a rather small percentage of the population. Today is just Sunday for me - bacon sandwiches, roast dinner with the family, play Minecraft with the kids, watch The Man in the White Suit. And for most of my extended family, the same is true. It's just like any other Sunday, except I can't go and buy some plants for the garden.