Easter isn’t a public holiday in these countries, but will other nations follow suit?

Majority of the 195 countries of the world recognised by the United Nations celebrate Easter, so much so it is declared a public holiday by these states. According to National Today, Easter Monday is a public holiday in 116 countries but “not all observations are directly centered around the Christian tradition”.

“In Ireland, it’s a day of remembrance for the men and women who died during the Easter Rising in 1916. In Egypt, the ancient festival of Sham El Nissem (literally meaning “smelling of the breeze”) falls on the same day, marking the beginning of spring.

“Some nations even recognize Easter Tuesday, including Cyprus, a national bank holiday; New Zealand, a mandatory holiday in the public education sector, and the Australian island state of Tasmania, a legal holiday for some workers,” said the outlet that collates tonnes of research on special holidays around the world.

However, there are still a lot of nations that do not recognise Easter as any type of special day whatsoever. Unsurprisingly, the majority of these countries are predominantly Arab nations where Islam is the dominant religion. These nations are found largely in the Middle East which is the epicentre and birthplace of the world’s second largest religious group. But just like Christianity, Islam has spread far beyond its roots with strong influence and presence on the continent of Africa and elsewhere.

Chief among them are: Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bhutan, Cambodia, Iran, Japan, Kuwait, Laos, Libya, Maldives, Mauritania, North Korea, China, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America, which will come as a massive surprise to many. Yes, Easter is not a public holiday in the US, but more on that later.

In these countries though you may still find pockets of Christian minority groups that pay homage to the Easter event this time of the year, albeit in secluded places like inside their homes. The Catholic Church once had a presence in Afghanistan, but according to the US State Department after its invasion and overthrow of the Taliban, not a single church remains today in a nation where freedom of religion is limited to strict adherence to a rigid adaptation of Islam’s Sharia Law.

In North Korea, described today as an irreligious state, more than two-thirds of the population is classified as atheists. Others may have religious inklings, but such expressions are kept as secrets out of fear of persecution by the government.

In another largely atheist country, China, Easter is regarded as a special holiday among Christians only, but not a public holiday like in many Western nations. Writing for China Highlights, Fercility Jiang in a column titled Easter in China said millions of Chinese Christians celebrate Easter in some fashion “but most people don't observe it or believe in the resurrection at all”.
Jiang wrote “millions of Chinese have taken up Western children customs such as Easter eggs hunts just for the fun or novelty”.

The commercialization of revered Christian events like Easter is also growing in China, and too in plenty Christian countries, obfuscating the essence of what the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ is all about.

In these countries where Easter isn’t recognised by the state, many Christians will surely argue that the goal of the devil is being achieved given the scant regard shown. However, the same can be said of Western countries and the slow death of Christian values that emanated from historical customs and practices such as Easter.

Opinions have been divided among Christians with many denominations against recognising Easter and other major events such as Christmas. Christian sects such as the Seventh Day Adventist, the Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and many others point to the Pagan origins of Easter, and even Bible scriptures that they contend support such a position.

This rift within Christendom has open up the doorways for secularism which is highly influential now more than half-a-century ago, especially in the West and remains a strong current Christians continue to battle against.

This is obvious in the United States where Easter isn’t a national holiday though it is observed by many institutions nationwide as a special holiday. North Carolina was the last US State that recognised Easter as a public holiday until 1987. At the heart of this secular trend is money. For example the US stock market closes on Good Friday and reopens Easter Monday, while the opposite occurs for European markets.

Could more countries follow the US and declare Good Friday and Easter Monday as just special holidays instead of public holidays?

This is easier said than done. For more than a decade countries like South Africa have set up a commission to determine religious public holidays amid growing secularism. Having laid out the grounds for both sides of the debate, Jacques Rousseau who teaches critical thinking and ethics at the University of Cape Town, concluded in a 2012 essay that debating on the grounds of discrimination is based on more human emotions than addressing the substantive issue.

“We’re becoming a nation of complainers, always on the lookout for who is abusing our dignity or denying some putative right,” Rousseau stated in his conclusion. “If there is a slight to other faiths and no faith here, it’s a minor one. But if we are to consider whether the current public holidays are the right ones, there are serious issues to debate – most importantly how we can derive maximum public benefit at lowest cost to the economy. Let’s hope the Commission takes the opportunity to consider those issues, rather than being exclusively concerned with religious (and non-religious) sensitivities.”

A few days ago the Bangladesh Christian Association (BCA) wrote to the government requesting a rethink of hosting public exams on Easter Sunday (April 17, 2022). The BCA has been lobbying the Bangladeshi government for the last 20 years to declare Easter a public holiday, even though Christians represent less than one percent of a population of 160 million people, the majority being Muslims.

As Rousseau alluded to in his writings, minority religious groups will naturally hold less sway convincing the government to declare celebrated religious holidays as public holidays.

The Americans have seemingly found a way to create a delicate balance between secular and religious groups. Therefore the possibility of more nations declaring Easter public holidays is unlikely to happen in the future. However, Easter being granted special holiday status is an increasing probability in other parts of a shrinking globalised village that is being monetized more and more and becoming highly technocratic as its very core.