As a working girl (get your minds out of the gutter) I get 9 holidays. Yesterday, Mayor de Blasio’s office announced that public schools in New York City will close for the Lunar New Year starting in 2016. This follows the March announcement that schools would close on Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha, two Islamic holy days. The 27 school holidays (both religious and national) of 2015-16 will now include:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Presidents Day (known as Midwinter Recess week)
Chinese New Year – Lunar New Year
Easter/Passover (6 days known as Spring Recess which starts on Good Friday)
Memorial Day
Eid al-Fitr (a July holiday only affecting summer school or year-round students)
Eid al-Adha
Jewish New Year – Rosh Hashanah
Columbus Day
Election Day
Veterans Day
Thanksgiving (2 days)
Christmas/Chanukkah (running from Christmas Eve through the New Year and known as Winter Recess)
New York City is the largest city in the United States with a population of nearly 8.5 million people from every continent, region, subregion, and country in the world. As many as 800 languages are spoken, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. There are areas in which up to 25% of people speak English as an alternate language, or have limited to no English fluency.
Now that we have given in to the Muslim and Chinese communities’ demands, how many other statistically large ethnic groups will petition for equal treatment? There are more than 350 religions and denominations in the United States, and I suspect we have members of most in New York City**. We haven’t yet heard from Buddhists, Hindus, Eastern Orthodox, Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons or Neopagans. And each country represented also celebrates their own national holidays. How many days off can one school year have, and can I have some too?
**New York City residents with school age children are from Italy, Ireland, Germany, Russia, Poland, England, Greece, France, Hungary Ukraine, Portugal, Scotland, Wales, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Australia, Romania and Jewish peoples of all nations. Most African countries are represented, along with Native Americans from the Chippewa, Navajo, Sioux, Mohawk, and Lenape tribes. Caribbean residents are from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Guyana, Belize, Grenada and Haiti. Asian cultures include India, China, Cambodia, Laos, Pakistan, Korea, Philippines, Japan, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Thailand and the Hmong people. Pacific Islanders are from Hawaii, Samoa, and Guam while Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Salvador and Haiti represent the city’s large Latino population. And to round out the list are Arabs and other panethnic groups from the countries of Western Europe, the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean.