Editorial

Much too long

Finally, the holidays are over. People are now preparing to resume their routines as work and school begin anew next week. Even vacations can be tiring.

What a long vacation it was. Christmas and New Year’s Day fell on a Thursday, which left Dec. 26 and Jan. 2 squeezed between these days and the weekend. Dec. 29 was a Monday, squeezed again between a weekend and the next day, Rizal Day.

Because of these, the government, operating on the holiday economics mentality, decided to declare the aforementioned dates as non-working days. Palace officials probably thought people could appreciate the extended holidays so they could have more time to unwind and bond with their families. These were good intentions, but they were misplaced.

That the country and the world are facing difficult times should remind people to keep their indulgences in check, if they can even afford to spend for non-essentials in the first place.

The extended holidays were also a bane to numerous daily-wage earners. Most probably, they spent most of their time home, wishing they were earning a living than being idle.

There were ideas that Rizal Day should be moved from Dec. 30 to June 19, the birth anniversary of the hero, to lessen the non-working days during the season. But that’s missing the point, really. It’s not the dates concerning Rizal that are wrong—it’s our leaders’ wrong notion of economic activity—or the lack of it—on certain days. This notion has also prompted our officials to play around with other commemorative dates for the sake of convenience, undermining these dates’ significance.

There is nothing wrong with taking a break. Everybody needs to, after all. But if the break turns into a lull, and when people are merely spending money without generating it, the economic and psychological implications are nothing to celebrate.