How to Be a Carioca - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Priscilla Ann Goslin (Lesson 21 Holidays and the Four-Day Weekend) #27

Lesson 21 Holidays and the Four-Day Weekend

Granted, there are a lot of national holidays in Brazil with all the saints to honor and what not. In an effort not to short change Brazilians when it comes to their holidays, the federal government has passed many laws over the years declaring when national holidays should be celebrated. To give you an idea, the following law (verbatim) was decreed a few years back establishing the correct manner in which to observe official holidays:

…Holidays will be observed on the previous Monday when they fall on the other days of the week. This also applies to holidays falling on Saturdays or Sundays. If the holiday occurs on Election Day, it will not be anticipated for another day. In case there is more than one holiday in the same week, the latter will be observed on Monday of the following week. If by any chance there is already a holiday in the following week, it will be observed on Monday, while the previous holiday will be celebrated on Tuesday.

But, like many laws, they are short lived, and so was this one. Regardless, Cariocas love holidays and take them very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they feel obliged to extend them to the maximum, even when it infringes on the work week. After all, even the Carioca is entitled to determine his own personal priorities. The following are a few of the parameters established by true Cariocas when planning for a feriadão [feh rree yah ’down] (long weekend):

If a holiday falls on a Tuesday or a Thursday, it is automatically a four-day weekend: if it’s a Thursday, it will begin at noon on the previous Wednesday, and if it’s a Tuesday, it will end at noon on the following Wednesday (to accommodate for traffic problems).

If a holiday falls on a Wednesday, you are looking at a five-day weekend, with the potential for a nine-day weekend.

The end of the year holiday — beginning on Christmas Eve at noon — will last until the Monday following Easter. (Nothing really happens at the office between Christmas and Easter, and with the New Year’s, Rio’s patron saint São Sebastiao’s birthday, and Carnival holidays in between, why even make the effort to go to work?)

With schools closed and the children making their trips to Disney World, taking July off is completely acceptable.

Rationalizing that by showing up for work on one hundred and fifty-three days out of a possible three hundred and three he is clearly doing more than his share for the country’s economy, the true Carioca considers this to be a perfectly reasonable schedule.

Note: Every four years, when Brazil plays in the World Cup Soccer Tournament, the number of required work days is directly reduced in proportion to the team’s performance.