Today Is A Holiday - Or Is It?

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Lorries/trucks are not allowed to run on the motorways in Germany on Sundays and holidays. So? Where's the problem? A transport company can certainly keep this in mind and plan the tours of their lorry drivers accordingly (from now on I'm going to use the British term lorry because I learnt it and am used to it). Ha, if it were so easy! Germany is a federal republic consisting of 16 Länder = lands. The Länder can be compared to the different states in the USA althought they're not as independent. But what they can decide for themselves is which religious holidays should also be public holidays meaning that public life is dead on these days. According to official statistics about 60% of the German population are nominally Christians, 56% are nearly equally divided between Catholics and Protestants. Roughly speaking, Catholics live mainly in the west and south of Germany, Protestants in the east and north. About 34% are unaffiliated with any religion. The remained 10% are divided between small religious groups. Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are celebrated in the whole country. Epiphany, however, only in three of the 16 Länder. (In case you've forgotten or have never known it: Epiphany celebrates the coming of the three Magi to baby Jesus bringing him the gifts of gold, frankinsense and myrrh.) The three Länder are Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria in the south and Sachsen-Anhalt in the east (one of the Länder of the former GDR=German Democratic Republic). Other religious holidays are celebrated in only one or up to five Länder. Why don't all Länder celebrate all religious holidays? Why don't Protestants celebrate, say, Epiphany? The answer is that most holidays are Catholic and that the predominantly Protestant Länder decided to follow the Protestand Work Ethics and rather work than celebrate. It was a political decision, not a religious one. The churches still celebrate the holidays but not with a free day. They've either moved the celebrations on the following Sunday or have the services in the evening of the day in question. What has all this to do with lorry drivers? Well, it can happen that they can drive through Germany from south to north or east to west without any interruption or that they have to stand still on a parking place and wait until the holiday is over depending if they're in a mainly Catholic or Protestant Land. It's possible that you've never wanted to know this. Yet, it may come handy should you ever have to drive a lorry through Germany. Today, for example, Catholics celebrate the holiday 'Corpus Christi' (also called Corpus Domini). It's always on the second Thursday after Pentecost. They do it with a general holiday in six of the sixteen Länder. In two Länder only certain communities close down for a holiday. Why make it easy if you can make it complicated? --- Pic: pixabay