Europe is a varied continent with plenty of different Christmas traditions. For example, some in the west of the continent may not have heard of the Krampus - St Nicholas’ demonic assistant who beats bad children with a stick.
However, one thing that everyone gets - and the Krampus can’t take away - is holiday. Every single country in Europe has at least one statutory day off in the period between 15 December and 15 January. This includes the majority Islamic countries such as Turkey.
Who gets the most though?
The majority of countries in Europe are Christian, whether that is Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox and bearing that in mind there are four key dates to look for:
- 25 December - Catholic/Protestant Christmas Day, which is the purported anniversary of the birth of Christ
- New Year’s Day - in terms of the Gregorian calendar, which every single country gets as a holiday
- 6 January - Epiphany, when Jesus was supposed to have appeared to the Magi (or three wise men)
- 7 January - Russian Orthodox Christmas Day
Around that there are several eves and and saints’ days but those four are the bedrock of the holiday season. There are secular days too, usually related to revolutions or new declarations of statehood that happened to fall in this time of year.
Russia, the home of the eastern Orthodox church, has the most days off over the Christmas period of any European country. Every day between New Year and the day after Russian Orthodox Christmas is a holiday, giving them eight off in total.
Closely following the Russians with seven are Armenia and Liechtenstein. The latter country gets Christmas Eve through to Boxing Day off as well as the two days either side of the New Year. For good measure, they also get Epiphany off - let’s call this the total Christmas holiday package.
The map below shows how many days off each country gets. As you can see, there is a bit of a west/east split here.
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Most western European countries get a similar settlement - Christmas Day, Boxing Day (or St. Stephen’s Day) and New Year’s Day with the overtly Catholic ones getting Epiphany too.
In the map above, we have only given holidays which the entire country gets but the number of days off but sometimes that varies by the region you are in. For example, in Germany only Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Saxony-Anhalt get Epiphany as a holiday. Similar arrangements exist in Spain, France and Switzerland.
It is also the case in the UK, where Scotland gets an extra day off on 2 January, which is considerably more kind to the hungover.
Looking at the worldwide picture then the US and Canada fare pretty badly, with only two national statutory holidays apiece. This is the same number of days as Japan, which does not have Christmas as a day off but does for some reason celebrate the day by eating fried chicken.
This article was amended on 26 December. It previously spelt Baden-Württemberg as Baden-Wittenburg.
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