Bank holidays. That magical British invention where productivity pauses, we all panic buy food, and the weather inevitably turns spiteful overnight. But where did these blessed days of sanctioned loafing come from? Was it a government plot to let us binge TV in daylight? A clerical error in the Victorian era? Or perhaps an elaborate ruse to confuse tourists?
Long before the term “bank holiday” was uttered in dusty offices, the idea of a day off was tied to religious observance. Mediaeval England was full of feast days, with saints galore, each one a valid excuse for a bit of loafing about, attending mass, and quite possibly getting very merry on ale.
These holy days were not optional. In fact, skipping them could get you into ecclesiastical hot water. The idea was less about rest and more about reverence, although the line blurred as the centuries rolled on and people discovered the joys of turning solemn prayer into rural frolics.
Fast forward to the Industrial Revolution, and factory owners were not exactly thrilled about their workers taking spontaneous breaks to honour Saint Whoever. Working life became regimented, and the calendar suddenly had fewer days that were not fuelled by coal, soot, and the steady grind of capitalist endeavour.
Enter Sir John Lubbock, a banker, MP, and keen cricketer, who thought this simply would not do. Lubbock noticed that banks and businesses had no legal right to close, even on days when everyone clearly wished they could just lie down and think of England. So he proposed the Bank Holidays Act of 1871, which created a set of official public holidays for England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. The original line-up included:
Easter Monday
Whit Monday
The first Monday in August
Boxing Day (or St Stephen’s Day in Ireland)
Scotland, ever the outlier, had slightly different days. Christmas Day, for example, did not become a bank holiday in Scotland until 1958. They were clearly too busy being Presbyterian to stop for a mince pie.
Legend has it that people began referring to the new holidays as Saint Lubbock’s Days, though tragically this never caught on in official calendars.
The term “bank holiday” is rooted in the fact that on these days, banks were legally closed. If banks were not open, neither were the businesses that depended on them. It night have been a very Victorian way of saying, “Nobody is working..”
Crucially, bank holidays were not quite the same as public holidays, such as Christmas, which already existed through custom and tradition. Bank holidays were modern inventions, bureaucratically ordained days of rest, and who does not love a day off endorsed by the Treasury?
Since then, we have added more holidays. The two May bank holidays came in the 1970s, a decade known for both labour rights, avocado bath suites and questionable wallpaper. Occasional royal events, such as jubilees, coronations, and national hangovers, are also rewarded with one-off bank holidays.
Controversies occasionally erupt over whether we have too many or too few, especially when comparing ourselves to our European cousins who seem to take long lunches and half of August off. In the UK, we prefer to cram all our rest into sporadic Mondays and then immediately complain about how short the weekend felt-but that’s generally my Monday morning thought…
Of course, no British bank holiday is complete without the rituals. Traffic jams to the coast, frantic DIY attempts involving paint, and confused efforts to remember whether the bins go out on the Tuesday “in lieu”. Shops sell out of sausages, weather forecasts lie, and someone, somewhere, will be barbecuing in a monsoon pretending it’s “fine”.
Bank holidays are a peculiar blend of tradition, legislation, and national character. They reflect our deep, unspoken need to occasionally stop everything, eat something barbecued, paint the lounge beige, and quietly wonder what day it is.
So next time you are enjoying a Monday off with absolutely no idea why, raise a glass to Sir John Lubbock, the man who gave us the right to be idle, legally.
Photo by Quaid Lagan
