“People are breaking”: who opposed the long New Year holidays in Russia

This year, the New Year holidays in Russia will last ten days – from December 30, 2023 to January 8, 2024. And in the last days of December, the question is heard on social networks: “Why do we need so many days off?” Numerous opponents of long rest make the same arguments every year. For example, Russian State Duma deputy Gennady Onishchenko has repeatedly mentioned that during the New Year holidays the number of alcohol poisonings and accidents that occur as a result of alcohol abuse increases (people freeze drunk in snowdrifts, break limbs and cause domestic injuries to each other). Studies conducted several years ago showed that in the first days after the New Year (January 1-3), suicides also increase.

May vs January

Almost every year another bill is introduced into the State Duma of the Russian Federation, the authors of which propose to shorten the New Year holidays by moving some non-working days to May. As a rule, we are talking about introducing amendments to the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. In January, it is proposed to make January 1, 2 and 3 non-working days. The remaining days will be moved to May and the period from May 1 to May 5 will be closed. At the same time, it is clarified that January 7 (Christmas) and May 9 (Victory Day) one way or another remain holidays, that is, weekends. However, such an initiative has never met with full approval – and the national holidays are still in January.

The authors of the idea of ​​moving the holidays to May appeal, as a rule, to the owners of summer cottages: the beginning of May is the height of gardening work, and people can supposedly spend time outside the city with benefit. However, these are still not the majority: firstly, not everyone has a dacha, and secondly, many Russians value extra days off in winter – for the opportunity not to wake up in the morning in pitch darkness, not to leave the house in the cold and not to jostle around on the way to work in crowded public transport.

According to a survey conducted by VTsIOM in the spring of 2023, citizens are dissatisfied with how they spend the New Year holidays due to financial problems. So, according to the survey, a year ago 40% of Russians spent the holidays at home, only 8% could afford to visit theaters and cinemas, and the number of citizens who visited clubs and restaurants on New Year’s holidays was also insignificant. This situation provokes serious depression among citizens.

“It is during such a long “rest” that people with low incomes understand that they cannot offer their family a good rest, which negatively affects their emotional state,” says the explanatory note to the next bill on postponing holidays to May, which was submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in 2023. That’s what it’s about. that people are constantly stressed by the fact that they cannot afford all the wonderful entertainment that is advertised on TV or on social networks (and parents also have to explain this to their children).

Apparently, it is understood that in May no one will worry about low income and the inability to offer their family interesting leisure time – everyone will be busy in their summer cottages.

If you don’t rest yourself, don’t give it to others!

Ordinary users of social networks usually focus on purely everyday issues. You can often hear and read complaints that, for example, during the holidays, women are tired of providing their families with three meals a day every day (it is assumed that families usually eat at work and at school), in addition, significantly more money is spent on groceries while everyone is at home. A common opinion: “For a woman, the words ‘rest’ and ‘home’ are incompatible!” Another pressing issue is the reluctance to arrange protocol visits to relatives, which cannot be avoided during the holidays, when everyone seems to have time. From time to time, complaints are heard that people supposedly bother each other when they find themselves locked in small apartments for several days, and parents simply do not know what to do with their own children. Those who are bypassed by the problem of alcohol are pushing for uncontrollable gluttony: they say, there is nothing to do during the New Year holidays, so the most common leisure format is lying on the couch in front of the TV and eating endless salads and cakes. The result is extra pounds (well, if not in terms of the number of days off), with which citizens go to work after the holidays.

However, there is an unpleasant nuance here. Various “cultural” leisure options often break down due to a simple obstacle: there are too many people everywhere these days – just from those who decided to have a cultural vacation with visits to museums and theaters.

Travel lovers often find it even more difficult: prices for tourist packages and hotels in popular places during the New Year holidays always almost double – and those who can afford to take a vacation in mid-December or, for example, in mid-January are in an advantageous position. and not in unison with the whole country. Tickets for planes and trains are running out, just as soon as they go on sale. Although there is a possibility that they end up due to the efforts of resellers – and at the last moment they return to sale again. Because, for example, it is still possible to fly from January 1 to January 7 from Moscow to St. Petersburg – and you can buy a ticket for only 6,500 rubles. A last-minute ticket to Sochi for the same dates will cost 15 thousand rubles, and to the nearest warm foreign cities – Yerevan, Tbilisi or Baku – approximately 20-25 thousand rubles.

However, according to a survey conducted in December 2023 by one of the job search sites, only 20% of respondents agreed with the idea of ​​shortening the New Year holidays. The majority (71%) approve of long holidays, although this topic remains one of the most controversial and difficult.

“The rejection of long holidays is largely due to the spread of remote work,” says psychologist Anastasia Alexandrova in an interview with an MK correspondent. — In certain circles, this format is still considered something wrong, as if it were “fake” work. However, after the coronavirus pandemic, people seemed to have come to terms with remote work, but many were still unable to answer the question: why relax if you work from home? In many families, this issue causes a serious generational conflict: parents and grandmothers, accustomed to daily “going to work” according to Soviet patterns, do not even understand why children working remotely take vacations. Their logic is very simple: “We went to work on January 2, why can’t they do the same?”

No money, but we’re holding on

The key issue is material. Of course, national holidays are paid for those employees who receive a fixed salary, but even here, according to Russians, unscrupulous employers find loopholes to underpay. There is a serious problem for those who do not work from 9 to 18 hours, but organize their work (project work) themselves, or depend on orders. And now the New Year bursts into their lives, built literally according to the principle “what goes around, so goes down,” and the need to put off work (and earnings!) for a week. In fact, the income of such people in January is reduced by about 25-30%, and few people may like this.

“This problem shouldn’t concern me, because I work for myself, and I also determine my own schedule,” says a manicurist named Anastasia. — However, it’s concerning: at the beginning of January there are no clients at all, almost everyone leaves. It turns out that it’s not weak, it’s so simple, and no one will compensate me for it. As a rule, it is possible to catch up only before March 8, and the beginning of the year is almost always “hungry.”

True, this position in the service sector is not very popular. Most beauty masters are sure that the week that ends December feeds them for the year.

From approximately December 20 until New Year’s Eve we have a busy schedule. Everyone urgently needs everything: a haircut, coloring, manicure, and massage… We extend work until 22:00, and in principle, these few days provide an opportunity to earn money for future use. Well, let’s relax during the holidays.”

Officially, January 2024 has 17 working days. This means that the desire (if someone suddenly has it) to extend the New Year holidays through vacation will result in serious material costs: it is most profitable to take a vacation in the month that has more working days, since vacation pay is calculated using a special formula that takes into account average daily salary of an employee. In January this is absolutely unprofitable.

Unexpectedly, accountants and financiers turned out to be sharply against the long New Year holidays: those who are responsible for issuing salaries to employees of the enterprise. According to them, even adults and valuable specialists sometimes demonstrate miracles of infantilism in January.

“More than once I have seen how, on the first working day of the year, adults with good salaries resort to asking for an advance before the advance (and in the amount of the usual advance!), because the salary, unexpectedly issued early at the end of the year, could not be stretched out,” says the accountant named Anna. — And with ski resorts it’s not so simple either. The trouble is not that some people have the money to go there, but others don’t. This has always been and always will be. The trouble is that people break down there. Literally: legs and arms are broken. And after the New Year holidays, one or two employees consistently end up on sick leave. And in general, I observe how it is not representatives of the social bottom, but irreplaceable specialists, who are having a hard time getting out of their drinking bouts, because life has gone off the beaten track in a week.”

Meanwhile, it became known that in the coming 2024 the days off will be December 29, 30 and 31 (Sunday, Monday and Tuesday). But Saturday, December 28, will be made a working day.