Sri Lanka’s holiday calendar seems chaotic to outsiders. The Poya day holidays that fall once a month are those that stand out from the regular holiday calendars of other countries, including those closer to us in South Asia.
Our holiday calendar is peculiar, even staccato, for other reasons. There are all types of holidays including those that are are public holidays due to religious reasons. But the Poya holidays along with all other holidays that mark special days of various religious persuasions, have made our holiday calendar vivid.
That is something that has not been taken to kindly by various persons including businessmen who want to regulate the holiday calendar, ostensibly because it is too intrusive and chaotic. It is deemed intrusive in relation to the work week, which according to the business elite, is bestleft uninterrupted.
In some countries such as China special holidays which occur in the middle of the week have been strung together with weekends so that these special holidays offer the people a fairly lengthy break when they are combined with regular weekends. However, by and large this would be impossible in Sri Lanka. Imagine moving the Vesak holiday to the Friday of the Vesak week, so that people could enjoy a longer break during the Vesak weekend?
It cannot be done as full moon holidays are determined by the waxing and waning of the moon, and a full moon holiday can’t be moved conveniently to the Friday of the week. So though our holiday calendar may not be set in stone, it is by and large rigid, and Sri Lankans have got used to the idea of holidays that occur during the middle of the work week.
BARGAIN
But are these holidays in character with the Sri Lankan psyche? Staccato holidays are serendipitous, and people are sometimes pleasantly taken by surprise. It is a uniquely Sri Lankan phenomenon, that our people are often surprised by their own holidays. The sudden realisation that there is a holiday in the middle of the week has had a de-stressing effect on most people in a country that doesn’t exactly reward workers with compulsory holidays, as they are available in Germany, where every worker is entitled to a prolonged annual vacation and is expected to take it.
But instead of the prolonged vacation, Sri Lankans have the serendipitous break. Serendib indeed was the ancient name for this island. The word serendipity arises from the historical name Serendib. A novel by Horace Walpole which came up with the word serendipity was set in Serendipo, based on Serendib, and serendipity by definition is tocome upon good fortune and unexpected discoveries that are not sought after. It is fine that people in Sri Lankan suddenly discover interspersing holidays that interrupt their work week. It is serendipitous, and personally this writer knows of a great many people who are happy to find out “tomorrow is a holiday.” It’s because they didn’t have any plans for it and are happy they have a break they didn’t quite bargain for.
But the holiday calendar replete with Poya holidays every month marking the full moon, have been criticized by sections of the business community and others as being chaotic and disruptive in a negative sense.
In India there have been some recommendations for a full moon holiday, but no administration has followed through. But our Poya day experiment has been going on for a very long time now, and has been seen as successful if only for the reason that in this country Poya has deep religious significance.
But the religious aspect apart, the staccato Sri Lankan calendar may have the just the right de-stressing ingredients that wein this country need. This would of course be heavily contested, and there would be those who would inveigh against this writer for advocating for holidays at the drop of a hat, just like we have now in our unique Sri Lankan holiday calendar.
SIGNIFICANCE
Big business has been essentially of the opinion for a long time, that our holiday system is disorganised and non-conducive towards production. Though there may be a modicum of truth in this assertion, in sum, the disorganised holiday calendar may have benefits that just may outweigh the downside.
In an era that is increasingly advocating the four day work week, it is generally accepted that continuous drudgery saps worker morale and diminishes the capacity for production. This again may be hotly contested by business interests, that are convinced that production depends on an uninterrupted production line that can operate without breaks to meet deadlines for orders, either from local wholesalers or foreign importers.
But, the morale of the workforce cannot be underestimated. Union action for instance has often been precipitated by disgruntled workers who feel they have not been treated humanely, and have been considered little more than robots by Managements.
If holidays cannot be given in voluntary gestures by Managements that seem to function on the conviction that the labour force has to be worked to breaking point, it is a happy outcome that we have holidays that are built into the system, chaotic as this system of staccato breaks may be. Besides that, Poya holidays are not of mere religious significance.
It is believed by many Wellness gurus that the full moon day is a special day, that has deep psychological effects on people in various ways. It is not a day that’s meant to be spent engaging in hectic activity, but is rather a 24 hour period that’s supposed to be spent meditatively, in sober contemplation. Those who may dismiss all that as hocus pocus would nevertheless not contest the fact that the waxing and the waning of the moon has an impact on the tides for instance, which is a scientifically proven fact.
ARGUE
Therefore, Poya holidays are not merely serendipitous, they are also of cultural significance, with positive health and wellness connotations. Big business may not relate to any of these aspects, but it is noteworthy that the general well-being of any nation’s people is not dependent on an economic assessment alone.
Sri Lankans celebrate the regular interruptions that are the result of our rather chaotic holiday calendar, and this is whether elites in big business or busybody opinion-makers like it or not. The people’s psyche is attuned to welcoming the serendipitous opportunities that our chaotic holiday calendar regularly affords them, and this aspect of our collective national psyche should not be scoffed at.
It’s one more thing that makes Sri Lankans uniquely Sri Lankan, this ability to juggle the holiday calendar with all its quirks, with the hectic work week. Of course people would argue that this juggling act was not done very well because Sri Lanka was unable to function well in economic terms, and has not been earning enough to pay off its debt obligations to other countries. But it is known that those are essentially political issues and that the people’s work ethic is not to blame. Our factories as they are have been productive and have met production deadlines, and if we are in the red as a country, it is due to more complex issues such as money management and political dysfunction.
So next time you are pleasantly surprised by a mid-week holiday that you didn’t quite expect, just sit back and enjoy it, because a guilt trip is not worth it. Our holiday calendar may even be ahead of the times as it represents one of the more humanising aspects of our approach to work and Management of labour. The holidays may not be in the calendar by design, and it may be by sheer accident that we have so many days of the week that are ‘deemed unproductive by business interests.” But serendipity being our national credo, it is not surprising that there are no complaints from Sri Lankans in general about this system of staccato breaks. Nobody is saying scrap this system, and give us public holidays that are cumulatively longer, or appended to weekends as in some countries. Our system of the sudden mid-week (and mid-production line…) break may counter intuitively, be the best practice for labour. It is perhaps another Sri Lankan idea we should try to export.
Rajpal Abeynayake
