WHILE the Dutch massively enjoyed Easter Monday, in the US everyone just went to work. After all, America has no Ascension Day, no second Christmas Day or Pentecost Day, nor a second Easter Day. America has its own paid holidays, Memorial Day, July 4, Thanksgiving etcetera. But no free Easter Day. Except in North Dakota.
The main reason for its absence is America’s separation of church and state. The government constitutionally may not impose religious beliefs on anyone. Religion-based mandatory days off fall under that prohibition. Employers, including the states as employers, are allowed to declare holidays if they want to. That’s why the day after Christmas is an official day off in Virginia, the Carolinas, Texas, New Hampshire and Kansas, and in North Dakota they got the day off after Easter, but by way of a local present, and not because it is a Christian holiday.
IT WAS the town of Vlissingen, now known as the New York suburb of Flushing, that put four holidays off for everyone.
If it had been up to the staid Peter Stuyvesant, all those Christian holidays would now be days off. Mrs. Judith Stuyvesant of Breda was concerned with the fate of slaves and wage laborers. They had to work through Easter, Ascension Day and Christmas, and such an extra day off was especially meant for them. Judith would probably have managed to persuade her husband to allow those holidays, because Peter was no fan of the separation of church and state. In New York, he insisted on everyone attending the Dutch Reformed Church. If he found out that you preferred to believe something else, Stuyvesant and his wooden leg would have personally put you behind bars.
THE CITIZENS of Flushing on Long Island rebelled against this. They filed an official petition in 1657 to bring about a separation of government and church, the “Remonstrance of Flushing.” If the government would keep its hands off everyone’s faith, as was by then more or less customary in Holland itself, then everyone could freely choose their own temple. Stuyvesant rejected it outright, sending the offenders back to Holland to be punished.
However, there they were acquitted. And so the state’s authority over others’ beliefs kept rapidly eroding. The “Flushing Remonstrance” has since been regarded as the starting shot for a government that imposes nothing on its citizens that has to do with religion. Which does include not imposing religious-based days off nationwide. Hence, everyone in America just went back to work the Monday after Easter. Compliments of Flushing.
Oh, but what about Christmas? Christmas Day is the exception, but that required the Supreme Court to intervene. The justices decided that Christmas with the tree, the lights and the originally Dutch St. Nicholas presents is actually a secularized event, therefore that day off is allowed.
