Do holidays have any significance anymore?
It seems like every time there’s a holiday week, there’s mass confusion about what’s opened and what’s closed. What’s shocking in a lot of cases is, well, what’s opened and what’s closed.
I had walked my dogs over to my parents’ house and my mom asked me if restaurants were open on Christmas Day. I said I had no idea. I couldn’t remember to my days working at Red Lobster as a teenager to recall which holidays we were open. I did some quick searches online and it looked like fast-food joints were open – and delivering, thanks to apps like SkipTheDishes.
She then asked me what would be open on Boxing Day. Again, I had no idea. Retail stores, of course. Anything else? I had no idea. From there, my mom took a walk down memory lane and reminded me that it wasn’t too long ago that everything was shut down in order to recognize a holiday. It’s a sign of how society has changed over the years but not to everyone’s benefit.
Still puzzling to me is how government-run casinos are allowed to be open all hours of the night (minus some holiday closures) but other types of businesses aren’t allowed to operate. That’s right. You are forbidden from going to a store during certain hours of a holiday — and yes, I’ll even use the word “illegal.” It’s against provincial law to be open so that would make it a matter of legalities. But when it comes to pissing away your life savings in a slot machine, the government has no hang-ups about that.
Imagine that. The Province will allow you to feed your gambling addiction any time you want over a religious week but you can’t run to the store and buy a T-shirt for yourself.
Perhaps a big part of that decision is sliding $20 bills into a machine makes the government quicker (and more) money than collecting sales taxes so that might be why the casino is open straight through a holiday weekend (in the case of Easter).
Sure, we can point fingers at the government for allowing this but we can also look at customers and say, “Send a message by not going if you don’t agree with it being open.”
I, personally, still have an issue with the government telling me which addictions I can feed and when. Be it my shopping addiction or my gambling addiction, why does one get more privilege than the other?
It leads us to a bigger discussion about: What is a holiday nowadays? Moreover, what is the significance of a holiday anymore?
