In a news article today it has been announced that Civil Servants working within the Education Department will in future be able to take bank holidays under the religious days of their choice.

At present the country has 8 set bank holidays that apply to all workers, some of which (including Christmas Day and Good Friday) have their roots in Christian festivals. Under the new proposal it means staff who do not celebrate the Christian calender (for example) may choose to work from home on those days which they can then take-off in lieu on those days that they wish to mark.

This proposal means that Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Muslims, Ba’haists, Zoroastrians and Pagans (amongst others) may work on Christmas day if they choose, and have their festivals such as Diwali, Hannukah, Eid etc., marked as a bank holiday instead. This proposal would also appear to be applicable to atheists and secularists alike, who may choose to transfer any one of the 8 current bankholidays to another date of their choice, for whatever reason they choose.

In my opinion this is a positive move. Some ‘right wingers’ have already criticised this initiative for being politically correct or for denigrating the Christian heritage of our country. This is a mute point as it is quite possible to describe this country as being post-christian in terms not merely of religious adherence but of practise. I think the idea of cultural flexitime is an excellent compromise and avoids the extreme of having multiple extra bank-holidays established in order to appease minority faith groups.