I love holidays because holidays are always a time of excitement. They are the days when the regular routines are paused, they are days when employees and students are relieved and get to breathe. These days are full of delight, relaxation and feast.
I spent almost all my life in Lagos, I only left for Kwara State for my university education. If you have been to Lagos city before you will agree with me that weekdays in Lagos are always very hectic, let me not even go into explaining the annoying traffic. That's why I always looked forward to public holidays, it's not that I'm excited about the purpose of the holiday, whether it is Independence Day, or Christmas, or workers day etc so far it is just a break, I'm super excited. To me it only means no school, no 5am morning call to bath, no long bus rides and no homework.
There are many public holidays we celebrate here in Nigeria, there are some holidays due to universal or festive celebrations, some are religious such as Eid el Fitr, Eid el Kabir, Christmas and Easter, some are professional days such as Workers Day and Teachers Day, even Children have their own day too. However, whenever a holiday happens to be on a weekend and government decides to move it to the following Monday, I'm always super excited because it usually feels like Mondays are the most stressful day of the week.
However, if you ask me if these holidays are enough, I will say NO because life itself in Nigeria is not easy, there are so many struggles. From traffic jams to bad living standards to the daily hustle to survive, all these wear us down, so most times it's the thought of a holiday at the end of the day is the only thing that keeps the workers on their feet.
I have observed how a single day of rest can change the attitude of the whole community. On these holidays are the days you wake up in the morning to see children running around with smiles on their faces, even parents especially mothers would laugh more cheerfully because they don't have to shout on the children to wake up early to get ready for school, everyone is at ease and happy. A vacation is not a mere resting day but a day of healing and refreshing for our body, spirit and mind.
However , the downside of these holidays is that any day off means less transactions, no profit, less productivity therefore there is loss of income. On holidays companies are closed, banks are shut and government offices are quiet. This doesn't only affect us individually but collectively as a country, it affects our national economy so more holidays will do us more damage than good. I know as human, we love to rest, we love to be comfortable, we are naturally lazy but nothing substantial is built in a comfort zone.
Although I'm not disputing the fact that we have to rest as humans even I also love holidays especially the festive celebrations for the love of reunion, colours, laughter and the food most especially 😁 so holidays are necessary but too much of everything is not good. I think having too much holiday is just too elaborate and we don't need that, we really need to balance everything for the our own good and for the betterment of our country.
Thank you so much for staying this far, hope you had a good read with me, see you again next time 😁