President Trump announced all federal employees will have an extra paid holiday on Christmas Eve, December 24th 2018.
Unfortunately it applies only to the federal employees. For the other workers, this day is still the normal work day. My husband is one of them. He will need to go to work.
The numbers of National holiday are different between in Japan and in America. In America they have only ten days for federal holidays a year. It is lesser than that of Japanese.
In Japan we have 16 National holidays. When I was working as a full time employee for a company in Japan, most companies offered extra paid holidays to their employees during Oshogatsu (beginning of the year), Obon (middle of August), and Nenmatsu (end of the year). Thus, most full time employees had extra 10 paid holidays in addition to 16 National holidays. Besides of that, the companies provided their employees with paid holidays up to 20 days a year.
While I was working as a full time employee, I took all benefits for granted.
In the latter half of my 30s, I started working as a temporary worker/freelancer. It was when I finally started appreciating for the benefits I had received during my years of working as a full time employees. Working as a temporary worker/freelancer was tough in terms of benefits. I needed to pay all the commute fee (public transportation fee of buses and trains), along with the other benefits such as health insurance fee, out of my pocket. I did not get paid for National holidays.
I am not going to end this story as a complaint for working as a temporary worker/freelancer. It is not my point.
My point is there is always two sides of a same coin. It is always up to us to choose which side of a coin. Also, it is always up to us on how we see it. Either appreciate it or complain it.
I chose working as a temporary worker/freelancer as my own choice. From this choice, I had much more freedom in choosing career. I could try out before I deeply dived in to a certain occupation. I could freely take a long term vacation. I had less responsibility on the job.
After I went through a variety of different types of employment and career, I think it was beneficial for me to have experimented them.
♬ Any feedback? (^^♪
three wisdom 