It’s funny how we hold to traditions like Christmas Eve or day, when many of us have our own feelings toward the religion behind the celebrations. Eg, many don’t hope (or feel the need to) to be at church for the x-o’clock service.
For us, mass is absolutely a vital part of Christmas.
Ideally, we’re all at the same mass. This year that changed, but it didn’t undermine the importance of being at mass for Christmas, just as it’s important for us to be there every Sunday.
We went to a service at the church where we were married on 12/23. They have had such big crowds for the Christmas Eve service that they scheduled one for 12/23 and asked for people to voluntarily switch to that one if at all possible. It actually worked out better for us.
When I was a teen and in college, I worked retail. I worked every time I came home between semesters. Christmas Eve was a given; I always felt really grateful if I got the earlier shift that day.
So the list of people working on major holidays includes those working in:
- Emergency services (police, fire, ambulance).
- Some medical services (hospitals and nursing homes where monitoring patients is necessary or there may be emergencies).
- Religious services if the holiday is based on their religion.
- Hotels.
- Airlines and other travel services.
- News and some entertainment, including some professional athletes.
- Utilities in case of outages.
- Military (watching for attacks or other situations of interest).
- Support services for all of the above.
Others?
Farmers with animals- those cows won’t milk themselves, nor can they go without being milked. Plus others needed for animal care.
@ucbalumnus - are you talking “essential” or all?
If all, I’d add restaurants, movie theaters, amusement parks, gas stations, some retail (I assume some 7/11, pharmacies and/or groceries are open). (I guess some of these are covered in your list under “entertainment”.)
Those providing services for animal boarding so families can travel, animal shelter workers.
Newspaper delivery
FedEx delivery
Babysitters, housesitters, domestic help,
taxi drivers, Uber drivers, bus drivers
shelter workers and volunteers
Doormen, dogwalkers,
Lots of people work holidays. I met an architect and his office was open 24/7/365. The owner was tired of deciding holidays, religious days, who should get off for a piano recital, sick days, so just declared all days work days and the employees worked when they wanted and didn’t work when they didn’t want to. My brother’s girlfriend is an attorney and has a lot of overseas clients. She worked thanksgiving because her clients needed something.
I wonder (worry) about my DD and how she will adjust post-college when she calls me with glee every semester to tell me that her new school schedule starts at 11am and she has fridays off lol.